I am looking to implement a Perl script that will search a directory
(or many directories) for certain text and then return a listing of
the files containing the text (for use on a web page, I am running the
Perl 32 port).  I know that grep can be used to accomplish this in
UNIX but I am using a Windows http server. I cannot seem to find a
windows version that be called from the Perl script. Anyone have any
suggestions or found a program that fits the bill? Thanks for any help
in advance!

-Derek

: I am looking to implement a Perl script that will search a directory
: (or many directories)

This part is left as an exercise for the reader  ;-)

: for certain text and then return a listing of
: the files containing the text (for use on a web page, I am running the
: Perl 32 port).  I know that grep can be used to accomplish this in
: UNIX but I am using a Windows http server. I cannot seem to find a
: windows version that be called from the Perl script. Anyone have any
: suggestions or found a program that fits the bill? Thanks for any help
: in advance!

step 1) man perlre
step 2) read it for a while  ;-)
step 3) bang out:

----------------
#!/usr/bin/perl -w
#               ^^   ALWAYS enable compiler warnings

# add argument checking here...

$pattern=shift;           # the first argument is the search regex

while ($fname = shift) {  # search each file named on command line
   open(FILE, $fname) || die "could not open '$fname' for input  $!";
   while (<FILE>) {
      if (/$pattern/) {
         print "$fname\n";   # print the filename
         last;               # go do next file
      }
   }
   close(FILE);

--
  Tad McClellan,      Logistics Specialist (IETMs and SGML guy)

<emailed and posted>

You can find UNIX utilities (including grep) for Win95/NT at:

ftp.cygnus.com/pub/sac/win32

Of course, you could also write your own grep in perl, which could be
faster depending on how you write it.  A colleague of mine wrote a
recursive search script which shells out to egrep for the actual
search, which turned out to be twice as slow as a recursive search I
wrote completely in perl.  The 'hard' part is building in all the
functionality of the original, if you need it.

-Kevin

                if (/$pattern/o) {...}

That way, $pattern only gets compiled once.

-Kevin