Article · Wikipedia archive · Last revised May 28, 2026

Find (Windows)

find is a shell command that searches for text in files and prints matching lines to standard output.

Last revised
May 28, 2026
Read time
≈ 2 min
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493 w
Citations
14
Source
Wikipedia ↗
find
DevelopersMicrosoft, IBM, DR, Datalight, Novell, Jim Hall, ReactOS Contributors
Initial releaseMarch 1983 (1983-03)
Written inMS-DOS: x86 assembly language
FreeDOS, ReactOS: C
Operating systemMS-DOS, PC DOS, FlexOS, SISNE plus, DR DOS, ROM-DOS, FreeDOS, 4690 OS, Windows, OS/2, eComStation, ArcaOS, ReactOS
PlatformCross-platform
TypeCommand
LicenseMS-DOS: MIT
FreeDOS, ReactOS: GPLv2+

find is a shell command that searches for text in files and prints matching lines to standard output.12

The command is available in DOS,3 Digital Research FlexOS,4 IBM/Toshiba 4690 OS,5 IBM OS/2,6 Windows,7 and ReactOS.8 On MS-DOS, the command is available in versions 2 and later.9 DR DOS 6.010 and Datalight ROM-DOS11 include an implementation of the find command. The FreeDOS version was developed by Jim Hall and is licensed under the GPL.12

Notably, the same-named Unix-based command performs an entirely different function – searching the file system for matching files. This functionality is provided by the forfiles command in an environment with the command of this article. The Unix-based grep command provides a function similar to the command of this article.13

Use

The command syntax can be described as: 

find [/v] [/c] [/n] [/i] "TEXT" [PATH...]
"TEXT"
Text to find. Must be enclosed in quotes. Notably, matching does not support wildcard characters.14
PATH
File system path to a file. If none specified, the command searches the text from standard input.
/v
Display lines not containing the text.
/c
Display only the count of matching lines.
/n
Display line numbers with matching lines.
/i
Ignore the case of characters when searching.

Examples

The following command searches file "Foo" for lines that contain "Important" and prints results to standard output. 

C:\>find "Important" Foo
See also

See also

References

References

  1. Paterson, Tim (2013-12-19) [1983]. "Microsoft DOS V1.1 and V2.0: /msdos/v20source/FIND.ASM". Computer History Museum, Microsoft. Retrieved 2015-10-01.
  2. Shustek, Len (2014-03-24). "Microsoft MS-DOS early source code". Software Gems: The Computer History Museum Historical Source Code Series. Retrieved 2015-10-01.
  3. Jamsa, Kris A. (1993), DOS: The Complete Reference, Osborne McGraw-Hill, p. 206, ISBN 0078819040.
  4. "FlexOS User's Guide" (PDF). www.bitsavers.org. 1986. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2019-09-25. Retrieved 2020-09-14.
  5. "Users guide". archive.org. Retrieved 2020-09-14.
  6. "JaTomes Help - OS/2 Commands". Archived from the original on 2019-04-14. Retrieved 2019-07-20.
  7. "Find". Archived from the original on 2017-08-26. Retrieved 2017-08-26.
  8. "reactos/reactos". GitHub. 3 January 2022.
  9. Wolverton, Van (2003). Running MS-DOS Version 6.22 (20th Anniversary Edition), 6th Revised edition. Microsoft Press. ISBN 0-7356-1812-7.
  10. DR DOS 6.0 User Guide Optimisation and Configuration Tips
  11. "Datalight ROM-DOS User's Guide" (PDF). www.datalight.com.
  12. "ibiblio.org FreeDOS Package -- find (FreeDOS Base)". www.ibiblio.org.
  13. "Equivalent of UNIX Grep command in Dos/Windows". January 26, 2009.
  14. "Find - Search for text - Windows CMD - SS64.com". ss64.com.
Further reading

Further reading

External links