On Tue, Sep 28, 2004 at 10:16:02PM -0400, Thomas E. Dukes wrote: > > Hello, > > I was wondering if there is a text editor equivalent to TextPad for > Windows. > > What I'm looking for is the ability to search for a word or phrase in a > directory of files. The generic way to check for a word of phrase in files it grep (think: "General Regular Expression Pattern matching"). See the man pages for grep, egrep, fgrep. The three differ in useful ways. I tend to just use egrep and the simple regular expressions. >From the man page "In addition, two variant programs egrep and fgrep are available. Egrep is the same as grep -E. Fgrep is the same as grep -F." .... " Grep understands two different versions of regular expression syntax:âbasicâ and âextended.â In GNU grep, there is no difference in avail- able functionality using either syntax. In other implementations, basic regular expressions are less powerful." One advantage of a separate tool for searching is that the choice of editor is not constrained and the search tool can be be optimized or special purposed. Others have pointed out other desktop solutions, like KDE... And then there is still the kitchen sink tool. emacs/xemacs. -- T o m M i t c h e l l Me, I would "Rather" Not.
