How to search a string in multiple files and return the names of files in Powershell?

There are a variety of accurate answers here, but here is the most concise code for several different variations. For each variation, the top line shows the full syntax and the bottom shows terse syntax.

Item (2) is a more concise form of the answers from Jon Z and manojlds, while item (1) is equivalent to the answers from vikas368 and buygrush.

1. List FileInfo objects for all files containing pattern:

   Get-ChildItem -Recurse filespec | Where-Object { Select-String pattern $_ -Quiet }
   ls -r filespec | ? { sls pattern $_ -q }
   

2. List file names for all files containing pattern:

   Get-ChildItem -Recurse filespec | Select-String pattern | Select-Object -Unique Path
   ls -r filespec | sls pattern | select -u Path
   

3. List FileInfo objects for all files not containing pattern:

   Get-ChildItem -Recurse filespec | Where-Object { !(Select-String pattern $_ -Quiet) }
   ls -r filespec | ? { !(sls pattern $_ -q) }
   

4. List file names for all files not containing pattern:

   (Get-ChildItem -Recurse filespec | Where-Object { !(Select-String pattern $_ -Quiet) }).FullName
   (ls -r filespec | ? { !(sls pattern $_ -q) }).FullName
   

This is how I would do it, you don't need get-content:

ls -r | Select-String dummy | select line,path

or

ls -r | Select-String dummy | fl *

To see what the different properties are...

This is faster. The second argument is -filter:

ls -r . *.bat | select-string netsh

ls -r -path . -filter *.bat | select-string netsh

Weirdly, I've found the select-string pattern matches against directory names as well.

This will display the path, filename and the content line it found that matched the pattern.

Get-ChildItem -Path d:\applications\*config -recurse |  Select-String -Pattern "dummy" 

Pipe the content of your

Get-ChildItem -recurse | Get-Content | Select-String -pattern "dummy"

to fl *

You will see that the path is already being returned as a property of the objects.

IF you want just the path, use select path or select -unique path to remove duplicates:

Get-ChildItem -recurse | Get-Content | Select-String -pattern "dummy" | select -unique path

I modified one of the answers above to give me a bit more information. This spared me a second query later on. It was something like this:

Get-ChildItem `
        -Path "C:\data\path" -Filter "Example*.dat" -recurse | `
    Select-String -pattern "dummy" | `
    Select-Object -Property Path,LineNumber,Line | `
    Export-CSV "C:\ResultFile.csv"

I can specify the path and file wildcards with this structures, and it saves the filename, line number and relevant line to an output file.

With PowerShell, go to the path where your files are and then type this command and replace ENTER THE STRING YOU SEARCH HERE (but keep the double quotes):

findstr /S /I /M /C:"ENTER THE STRING YOU SEARCH HERE" *.*

Have a nice day 🙂

Get-ChildItem -r | ? {$_.psiscontainer -eq $false} | ? {gc $_.pspath |select-string -pattern "dummy"}

This will give you the full details of all files

To keep the complete file details in resulting array you could use a slight modification of the answer posted by vikas368 (which didn't seem to work well with the ISE autocomplete):

Get-ChildItem -Recurse | Where-Object { $_ | Select-String -Pattern "dummy" }

or in short:

ls -r | ?{ $_ | Select-String -Pattern "dummy" }

If you search into one directory, you can do it:

select-string -Path "c:\temp\*.*" -Pattern "result"  -List | select Path

This will display a list of the full path to each file that contains the search string:

foreach ($file in Get-ChildItem | Select-String -pattern "dummy" | Select-Object -Unique path) {$file.path}

Note that it doesn't display a header above the results and doesn't display the lines of text containing the search string. All it tells you is where you can find the files that contain the string.

This Scrit worked to find a specific file in a 3 000 000

Param
(

     #Define o parametro do ano a eliminar "2020"
     $DateDel = '2019',
     
     #Define o parametro do registro do ficheiro "_800" ou "_800sm" ou "_200"
     $ResFile1 = '_200',
     $ResFile2 = '_800',
     $ResFile3 = '_800sm',

     #Define o parametro da terminacao do ficheiro "_800.jpg" ou "_800sm.jpg" ou "_200.jpg"
     $TypeFile = '.jpg',
     
     #Define o parametro de onde se localizado ficheiro "C:\users\Luis.Cunha\Desktop\LuisCunha\TarefaScript\TesteFinal\TesteScript1"
     $HomePath = 'C:\Users\Luis.Cunha\Desktop\LuisCunha\TarefaScript'   
)

 #Inicia transcriçao de toda informação para o ficheiro .log indicado
 Start-Transcript -Path $HomePath\CountDelItems.log -NoClobber -Append

 Get-ChildItem $HomePath -Recurse -File | Measure-Object | %{$_.Count}

 #o Get vai buscar o ficheiro com a data e a terminacao definidas no $homepath e $tipofich atraves do caminho indicado no $path
 #depois confirma os valores que foram removidos com o verbose
Get-Childitem -Path $HomePath -Recurse -force | Where-Object { !$_.PSIsContainer -and $_.name -like "????$DateDel*$ResFile1$TypeFile" } | Measure-Object | %{$_.Count}
    
 #Get-Childitem -Path $HomePath -Recurse -force | Where-Object { !$_.PSIsContainer -and $_.name -like "????$DateDel*$ResFile1$TypeFile" } | Remove-Item -Verbose -Force 

 Get-ChildItem $HomePath -Recurse -File | Measure-Object | %{$_.Count}


 #Termina transcrição
 Stop-Transcript