Recursive search for string within files on a drive - powershell

Question

I am trying to do a search for specific file within a directory with the following command:
gci -recurse -path "E:\" | select-string "searchContent" | select path
doing so gave me an insufficient memory error. I have seen other posts recommending piping it into foreach-object, but I couldn't figure out how to get it to work in my scenario. Any assistance appreciated!

Answer 1

When reading the file as a whole (single multiline string), your seach can be much faster than by testing line-by-line.
Also, you could speed up significantly if you could use a filename pattern as filter for the Get-ChildItem cmdlet. If you for instance only want to search through .txt files, add -Filter '*.txt'.
In any case, append switch -File so Get-ChildItem won't try to pass DirectoryInfo objects to the rest of the code.
Try:
# since we use regular expression operator `-match`, escape the word or phrase you need to find
$searchContent = [regex]::Escape('whateveryouarelookingfor')
$result = Get-ChildItem -Path 'E:\' -Recurse -File | ForEach-Object {
if ((Get-Content -Path $_.FullName -Raw) -match $searchContent) { $_.FullName }
}
A bit faster than using ForEach-Object{..} would be to use a foreach() instead (skipping processing time needed to pipe results)
# since we use regular expression operator `-match`, escape the word or phrase you need to find
$searchContent = [regex]::Escape('whateveryouarelookingfor')
$result = foreach ($file in (Get-ChildItem -Path 'E:\' -Recurse -File)) {
if ((Get-Content -Path $file.FullName -Raw) -match $searchContent) { $file.FullName }
}
Now you can display the full path and filenames on screen
$result
and save it as text file on disk
$result | Set-Content -Path ('X:\FilesContaining_{0}.txt' -f $searchContent)

Answer 2

Just assign it to a variable, and then have a foreach loop that assigns each one to another variable.
$files = gci -recurse -path "E:\"
foreach ($fileName in $files)
{
if ($fileName.Name -like "*searchContent*")
{
write-host $fileName.Name
}
}

Answer 3

I feel this should consume less memory. Can't tell for sure but you can let me know. The concept is the same but using [System.IO.StreamReader].
Note: This will keep on looking for all files it can find, if you need the loop to stop at first finding then a new condition should be added.
foreach($file in Get-ChildItem -Recurse -path "E:\" -File)
{
$reader = [System.IO.StreamReader]::new($file.FullName)
while(-not $reader.EndOfStream)
{
if($reader.ReadLine() -match 'searchContent')
{
$file.FullName
break
}
}
$reader.Dispose()
}