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Asked: 2026-05-14T15:14:27+00:00

Windows command line, I want to search a file for all rows starting with:

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Windows command line, I want to search a file for all rows starting with:

# NNN "<file>.inc"

where NNN is a number and <file> any string.

I want to use findstr, because I cannot require that the users of the script install ack.

Here is the expression I came up with:

>findstr /r /c:"^# [0-9][0-9]* \"[a-zA-Z0-9_]*.inc" all_pre.txt

The file to search is all_pre.txt.

So far so good. Now I want to pipe that to another command, say for example more.

>findstr /r /c:"^# [0-9][0-9]* \"[a-zA-Z0-9]*.inc" all_pre.txt | more

The result of this is the same output as the previous command, but with the file name as prefix for every row (all_pre.txt).

Then comes:

FINDSTR: cannot open |
FINDSTR: cannot open more

Why doesn’t the pipe work?

snip of the content of all_pre.txt

# 1 "main.ss"
# 7 "main.ss"
# 11 "main.ss"
# 52 "main.ss"
# 1 "Build_flags.inc"
# 7 "Build_flags.inc"
# 11 "Build_flags.inc"    
# 20 "Build_flags.inc"
# 45 "Build_flags.inc(function a called from b)"

EDIT: I need to escape the dot in the regex also. Not the issue, but worth to mention.

>findstr /r /c:"^# [0-9][0-9]* \"[a-zA-Z0-9_]*\.inc" all_pre.txt

EDIT after Frank Bollack:

>findstr /r /c:"^# [0-9][0-9]* \"[a-zA-Z0-9_]*\.inc.*" all_pre.txt | more

is not working, although (I think) it should look for the same string as before then any character any number of times. That must include the ", right?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    You are missing a trailing \" in your search pattern.

    findstr /r /c:"^# [0-9][0-9]* \"[a-zA-Z0-9]*.inc\"" all_pre.txt | more

    The above works for me.

    Edit:

    findstr /r /c:"^# [0-9][0-9]* \"[a-zA-Z0-9]*\.inc.*\"" all_pre.txt | more

    This updated search string will now match these lines from your example:

    # 1 "Build_flags.inc"
# 7 "Build_flags.inc"
# 11 "Build_flags.inc"
# 20 "Build_flags.inc"
# 45 "Build_flags.inc(function a called from b)"

    Edit:

    To circumvent this “bug” in findstr, you can put your search into a batch file like this:

    @findstr /r /c:"^# [0-9][0-9]* \"[a-zA-Z0-9_]*\.inc" %1

    Name it something like myfindstr.bat and call it like that:

    myfinsdtr all_pre.txt | more

    You can now use the pipe and redirection operators as usual.

    Hope that helps.

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