PowerShell Find Files Script

FindFiles returns a list of files that contain the search text. The search can be plain text or a regular expression.

This function is similar to using the Select-String cmdlet with the -list switch parameter. The difference is that FindFiles supports searching across line breaks. See the examples that use the "dot matches line breaks" regex pattern (?s).

function findFiles($text)
{
  begin
  {
    $count = 0
  }
  process
  {
    $data = [system.io.file]::readAllText($_.fullname)
    if ($data -match $text)  #if matches at least once...
    {
      $_.fullname
      $count += 1 
    }
  }
  end
  {
    "$count files found"
  }
}

Examples

#find files containing "abc"
gci c:\* -include *.txt | findFiles 'abc'

#find files containing "abc" or "xyz"
gci c:\* -include *.txt | findFiles 'abc|xyz'

#find files containing "abc", including across line breaks
gci c:\* -include *.txt | findFiles '(?s)a.*bc|ab.*c'

#find files containing "<abc>" tags, including across line breaks, and empty tags
gci c:\* -include *.txt | findfiles '(?s)<abc>.*</abc>|<abc/>'