About this task
You can search for text strings and files on any remote server or
file system, including Linux, UNIX, Windows, and the
IBM® i IFS. See
Searching for text strings
on the IBM i server for
information on searching the Native
IBM i file
system.
There are three main ways you can search for files and text
strings on remote servers, depending on your goal:
- Search for text strings within a file
- Search for text strings and/or files within a folder
- Search for text strings, files, and/or folders within a remote file system
To search for files, text strings, and folders:
- In the Remote Systems view, expand your IBM i, Linux, UNIX,
or Windows connection
until you reach the folder, file, or file system that you want to search.
Select the containing item by clicking on the item.
- Click from the workbench menu. Or, for the keyboard shortcut, enter
CTRL+H.
- In the Remote Search window, click the Remote Search tab if it is not
already in focus. You can now search for text strings, files, and/or folders,
with the option to use powerful Regular Expressions, in addition to normal
and variable expressions, such as a*b. See Searching
for files and text using wildcards for more information. Regular Expressions
might be most relevant for Linux users.
- To search for strings, in the Search string field,
enter the string that you want to search for, whether it be from a file, a
folder, or an entire file system. Select the Case sensitive or Regular
expression check boxes if they apply. Leave this field as an asterisk
(*) if you do not want to search for strings. You can use commas to specify
more than one type of string to search for. For example, you could enter "*.c,
*.java, b?a.txt, " and so on.
- To search for files, in the File name patterns field,
enter the name of the file you are looking for. Select the Regular
expression check box if this option applies. Leave this field
as an asterisk (*) if you do not want to search for files. You can use commas
to specify more than one type of folder to search for. You can also click Browse to
select file extensions to search for.
Note: You cannot edit the contents of the Folder field;
however, you can click the Browse button to browse
to and specify another folder. If the Folder field
is empty, you need to browse to a particular folder before you can launch
the search.
- Click Search.
The matching strings and/or files display in the Remote Search view.
The view updates itself as more matches are found and you can click the
Stop button
if you want to stop the search process. The view shows the strings and/or
files that you searched for, with the matches listed beneath in a tree-view
structure. For example, if you searched the file "README.txt" for the following
string, "bin", then the Remote Search results view might look like this:
To manipulate
the set of search results:
- Right-click the parent items of the tree, in this example, "README.txt",
and you can select any of the regular Remote Systems options, for example, Open
With, Rename, Properties,
and so on.
- Right-click any line beneath the parent search item in the tree, in this
example, "bin/rmid and jre/bin/rmid":
- Select Copy to copy the path as you see it to your
clipboard.
- Select Go to to open the file in an editor, which
highlights the matching text. You can double-click on any line to perform
the same action.