- 1 year ago
VIM on Windows fails to execute grep with regex patterns
On Windows, the default installation of Vim does not come with a built-in grep
command. Instead, it relies on external tools like grep
from Unix-like environments or findstr
from Windows to perform the search.
If you want to use grep
with regular expressions in Vim on Windows, you have a few options:
Install Grep for Windows:
You can download and install a version ofgrep
specifically built for Windows, such as GnuWin32 or UnxUtils. After installation, make sure thegrep
executable is in your system'sPATH
environment variable. Vim should then be able to usegrep
for searching with regular expressions.Use findstr (Built-in on Windows):
If you don't want to install additional tools, you can usefindstr
instead ofgrep
.findstr
is a built-in Windows command that provides some similar functionality togrep
. However, the regular expression syntax used byfindstr
is slightly different fromgrep
.To search with regular expressions using
findstr
, you need to use the/R
switch. For example:vim:vimgrep /R pattern file.txt
Note that
findstr
uses a different regular expression syntax thangrep
, so you may need to adjust your regular expression patterns accordingly.Install Cygwin or WSL:
Alternatively, you can install Cygwin or Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) on your Windows system, which provides a Unix-like environment withgrep
and other Unix utilities. Once installed, you can run Vim inside the Cygwin or WSL terminal, andgrep
should work as expected.
Choose the option that best fits your needs and system setup. Installing Grep for Windows or using Cygwin/WSL can give you a more Unix-like environment, while using findstr
allows you to work with a built-in Windows tool.