How can I do a "find" in an unopened file?

[bellgamin]

I am seeking software that can do a "find" in unopened files.

That is, I need a program that can search through an unopened file and tell me whether it contains (for instance) "man bites dog."

The above capability would be delightful. Even better would be a program that can search an unopened file for "man bites dog" and, if it finds it, change it to "dog bites man."

I'm not sure if what I'm describing even exists.

Any comments, suggestions, or even snide remarks would be welcomed.

Aloha from Hawaii,
Bellgamin

[Greg@outtacyte]

You might take a look at UltraEdit, www.ultraedit.com.

This is a Windows Text editor which can search groups of files, and even change them.  It doesn't handle files like MS Word, and it doesn't have a port to Unix (I Wish!), but it can open Unix files via FTP for edit.


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Greg

[Deb]

I'm not quite sure I am on the right track here but just in case I'll toss my ten cents out anyway

http://www.ghisler.com/ I believe searches unopened files...including compressed files (it's an awesome file manager) but it wont do the 'replace' part of the request.

http://www.ultraedit.com/ will perform a search and replace on unopened text files where you simply define the directory you want it to go through and let it do its thing. (another awesome must-have piece of software)

Deb
 - Toolz, Toolz, and more Toolz

[Dunx]

As a child of the command line, I would be reaching for grep for the search and perl for the replace: regular expressions can take a bit of learning, but they're jolly powerful once you get the hang of them.

For example:

grep -n '<string>' *.txt

perl -pe 's/<string1>/<string2>/' -ibak

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Dunx

[bellgamin]

Greg &amp; Deb -- many many thanx!

UltraEdit is indeed ultra.

[chrisheng]

My only gripe about UltraEdit's search and replace facility (for unopened files) is that it does not allow prompted search and replace - where you are prompted if you want to replace a particular match. Otherwise I'd be very satisfied with it.