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Supersonic Text File Search - Free Download

The current general sfk options.
  • Download the free Swiss File Knife Base from Sourceforge.
  • Open the Windows CMD command line, Mac OS X Terminal or Linux shell.
  • OS X : type mv sfk-mac-64.exe sfk and chmod +x sfk then ./sfk
  • Linux: type mv sfk-linux-64.exe sfk and chmod +x sfk then ./sfk. OS X and Linux syntax may differ, check the help within the tool.
sfk general options reference:

Please note: some of these options are supported only by some commands.

general processing options
-var        insert SFK variables by using #(varname). type this
            option directly after "sfk" to use it globally with all
            commands in a chain or script. to print "#(" literally
            then, escape it like ##(. for more on variables
            type: sfk help var
-yes        fully execute the command. some commands like "run" are
            running in simulation mode by default, to avoid damage to your
            files, as long as you're unsure which files and dirs to select.
            as soon as you add -yes, however, everything is fully executed.
-keepchain  never stop the command chain, even if commands that expect
            filenames get none. default since sfk 1.9.9.
            for more details: sfk help chain
-stoponempty  stop the command chain if commands that expect
            filenames get none. default until sfk 1.9.8.2.
-upat       unix compatible file or text selection and patterns.
            allows to use -subdir :/tmp instead of !\tmp, filter -:foo
            instead of -!foo and run "#file" instead of "$file",
            to create unified .sh batch files for Windows and Linux.
-upat2      same as -upat but also support wildcard % instead of *
            you may also set this by an environment variable like:
            set SFK_CONFIG=upat2
-noesckey   disable stop by escape key. (windows only)

file input options
-nosub      or -norec does not include subdirectories (subfolders).
            processing of subdirs is DEFAULT with most commands,
            therefore you must specify -nosub to switch it off.
-withsub    include subdirs. is DEFAULT with most commands.
-maxsub=n   include contents of up to n subdir levels.
-withdirs   include (sub) folder names in processing.
-justdirs   use just (sub) folder names for processing.
-nofollow   or -nofo does not follow symbolic directory links.
            this option may NOT work with older Linux versions,
            esp. those needing the "lib5" binary version of sfk.
-textfiles  process only text files, no binaries. -text is the same,
            but this may interfere with command-local -text options.
            text/binary detection only checks the file's first 4 kbytes.
-binfiles   process only binary files. -bin is the same, but this may
            interfere with some command's local -bin option.
-hidden     include hidden and system files.
-nohidden   exclude hidden and system files.
-minsize=s  select only files >= size, like 10b or 100k
-maxsize=s  select only files <= size, like 10m or 4g
            b=bytes k=kbytes m=megabytes g=gigabytes=10^9 bytes
            K=2^10 bytes M=2^20 bytes G=2^30 bytes
-sincedir   or -sincedif/add/chg: compare directory tree against
            a reference tree, process only changed or added files.
            see "sfk list" for details.
-since      process only files changed on or after the supplied
            date/timestamp. "sfk list" for details.
-before     process only files changed before that date/timestamp.
-flist fn   or "-fl fn" reads list of filenames from file fn.
-tomake .ext   select only files that have no, or an older,
            counterpart file with extension .ext in the same folder.
-tomake outdir\$base.ext  select only files that have no or
            an older counterpart file in outdir with extension .ext.
            see "sfk run" for example: .wav to .mp3 conversion
-wchar      activate EXPERIMENTAL utf-16 (ucs-2, wide char) decoding,
            allowing sfk find or filter to search text in utf-16 files.
            should not be used when (re)writing files. get more infos
            by typing "sfk help unicode".

text input and filtering options
-case       activate case sensitive text comparison with some commands.
            most text processing commands are case-insensitive by default.
            filename comparison is always case insensitive.
            for details see: sfk help nocase
-spat       activates interpretation of slash patterns:
            \t=TAB \q=" \r=CR \n=LF \\=\ \xnn=any char w/hex code nn
            with some commands like replace, filter -form and -replace.
-spats      strict slash patterns, show error on wrong patterns like \a.
-literal    or -lit disables interpretation of wildcards * and ?
            and slash patterns, if they were activated previously.
-nospat     disables only slash patterns.
-deacc      use accent insensitive text search and filename selection,
            i.e. a == a_accent or o == o_umlaut. may work only with
            some windows code pages, but not with utf-8 text.
-binallchars  with binary-to-text conversion, include all printable
              characters, like accents or non latin.

network options
-header x   or -head adds custom header x to http requests, like
            -header "Accept-Language: de,en-US;q=0.7,en;q=0.3"
            multiple header lines can be given. default headers
            with the same name are replaced.

user information options
-verbose    print additional infos while running a command.
            helpful if a command doesn't work as expected.
            only some commands support -verbose. try also -verbose=2.
-more       pause output based on terminal height.
-more50     paged output with 50 lines per page.
            -more is experimental and may fail to count exactly.
-quiet      reduce output on some commands. e.g. the find command will
            not display the "scan" status info while searching files.
-quiet=2    reduce output even more on some commands.
-nowarn     and -noerr, -nonote disable warn, error and note messages.
-nohead     no not list header/trailer info on some commands: the run cmd
            will not tell "simulating" even if it's in simulation mode.
-tracechain   tell in detail how the command chain is executed.
-tracesel   give verbose infos why directories and files have been
            selected or excluded. -tracedirs lists only directories,
            -tracefiles lists only files.
-debug      print extra program flow infos to track errors.
-exectime   tell command execution time at program end.
-headers    print http headers with commands accessing the web.

file output options
-tofile x   specify a single output filename, which is taken as is
            and not checked for any $ patterns.
-to mask    specify where to write output files with some commands.
            mask supports $file, $path, $relpath, $base, $ext and more,
            like -to outdir\$base-modified.$ext
            say "sfk run" for a list of possible keywords.
-tmpdir x   set directory x as temporary file directory. default is
            to use the path specified by TEMP or TMP env variable.
-showtmp    tell verbosely which temporary files are created.
-keeptmp    do not delete the temporary files, if possible.

terminal output options
-nocol      disable all colored output. important if your shell has
            a background color incompatible to the default color scheme,
            or (under linux) if the sfk output text must be processed
            further through pipelining, and needs to be stripped from
            the color escape sequences.
-col        switch on colored output. "sfk help colors" for more.
-nocconv    when printing output to the windows console, sfk tries
            to convert umlaut and accent characters to display them
            correctly with codepage 850. set -nocconv to disable this.
            whenever output is redirected to file, no conversion is done.
-cconv      force codepage conversions: if command output is redirected
            to a file, codepage conversion is disabled by default.
            use this option to activate, e.g. when post-processing
            sfk run output which produced filename lists.
-html       dump sfk help text (color control) in html format.
            -html must be typed directly after "sfk".
-htmlpage   the same, but include a header to view it in a browser.

return code and error options
-showrc     print sfk return code at end of command or program.
            may not print anything in case of fatal errors,
            like wrong syntax (usually rc 9).
-justrc     let some commands print nothing and just produce an rc.
-exterr     in case of operating system related errors like file access,
            prints extended error information, if available.
-waitonerr  wait for user input on every error.
-waitonend  wait for user input at program end.
-stoponerr  stop directory tree processing on first unreadable file.
            default is to process as many files as possible, skipping
            unreadable files and directories.
-rcfromerr  some commands like filter, find, hexfind tell by shell rc
            that something was found. by default, skipped errors like
            unreadable files do NOT change this rc. with -rcfromerr,
            skipped errors do override the resulting shell rc.
-echoonerr  echo whole command to stderr when an error occurs.
            see also the SFK_CONFIG setting "echoonstart" below.
to experiment with the above options, try "sfk errortest".

diverse options
-arc        read contents of well known zip, tar.gz and tar.bz2 archives
            as deep as possible, including nested archives.
            well known archives must have one of these extensions:
            .zip .jar .ear .war .aar .xpi .tar .tar.gz .tar.bz2 .tgz
            .gz .bz2 .docx .xlsx .dotx .pptx .odt .ods .otg .odp .odg
            .dotm .docb .xlsm .xltx .xltm .pptm .potx .potm .ppam .ppsx
            .ppsm .sldx .sldm .odc .odf .odi .odm .ott .ots .otp .jmod
            to include further extensions, read below about SFK_ZIP_EXT.
            this binary (SFK Base/XD) can read only the first 1000 bytes
            of every archive entry. listing of contents is not limited.
            type "sfk help xe" for all details and restrictions.
-xarc       read contents of any zip file, regardless of file extension,
            and tar.gz and tar.bz2 files. reads the first bytes of every
            file and will therefore perform slower then -arc.
-qarc       quick read top level archives but not nested ones.
-weblimit=n    change web access download limit to n mbytes, with
               functions like sfk web, filter, xex. default is 100 mb.
               you may also set SFK_CONFIG=weblimit:30
-webtimeout=n  web access timeout in msec. default is 10000.
               you may also set SFK_CONFIG=webtimeout:3000
-webuser=u     together with -webpw=p set HTTP basic authentication
               with diverse commands supporting http:// web access.
-memlimit=n set the caching memory limit to n mbytes (default=300).
            used if a function needs to load whole files into memory.
            if zip etc. archive processing is very slow, it may be caused by
            a cache overflow. try to increase the -memlimit then.
            if you think sfk uses too much memory while processing files,
            try to reduce -memlimit (values below 200 are not recommended).
            you may also set SFK_CONFIG (see end of this text).
-cachestat  tell amount of memory used by archive file cache.
-nocache    disable the disk cache (for network files).
-noipex     disable automatic IP expansion with some commands.
-noop       do nothing (no operation). sometimes helpful as a fill-in.

command local versus global scope:

   within a command chain, many options have an effect only locally
   with the command where they are specified, e.g. in

      sfk filt x.txt -case -high red FooCase +filt -high blue TheBar

   the "-case" is valid only for the first filter command.
   but the following options can also be used globally, if specified
   directly after "sfk":

      -nohead -noinfo -nofile -case -literal -spat

   for example, in

      sfk -case filt x.txt -high red FooCase +filt -high blue TheBar

   the "-case" is valid for ALL commands in the command chain.

environment configuration:

   set SFK_CONFIG=columns:n,active-file-age:n,memlimit:n,...
     columns:
       sfk (for windows) tries to autodetect the no. of console columns,
       but you may also set this value through this config parm.
     active-file-age:n
       some functions need to tell if a file is 'recently edited' or rather
       old and inactive. by default, files > 30 days of age are considered
       non-active. reconfigure the no. of days threshold here.
     memlimit:n
       set memory limit to n mbytes.
     echoonstart:
       echo the whole sfk command on start, to stderr.
     echoonerr:
       echo the whole sfk command on errors, to stderr.
     tmpdir:path
       set folder for temporary files, used by some commands.
       e.g. set SFK_CONFIG=tmpdir:d:\tmp,memlimit:500

   set SFK_ZIP_EXT=".foo .bar .myext"
     set additional, user defined zip file extensions. in this example,
     files ending with .foo, .bar or .myext are also treated as zip files.
     for the list of default extensions, look above at the -arc option.

 
sfk general options reference:

Please note: some of these options are 
             supported only by some
             commands.

general processing options
-var        insert SFK variables by using 
            #(varname). type this option
            directly after "sfk" to use it
            globally with all commands in a
            chain or script. to print "#("
            literally then, escape it like
            ##(. for more on variables
            type: sfk help var
-yes        fully execute the command. 
            some commands like "run" are
            running in simulation mode by
            default, to avoid damage to
            your files, as long as you're
            unsure which files and dirs to
            select. as soon as you add -yes,
            however, everything is fully
            executed.
-keepchain  never stop the command chain, 
            even if commands that expect
            filenames get none. default
            since sfk 1.9.9. for more
            details: sfk help chain
-stoponempty  stop the command chain if 
              commands that expect
            filenames get none. default 
            until sfk 1.9.8.2.
-upat       unix compatible file or text 
            selection and patterns. allows
            to use -subdir :/tmp instead of
            !\tmp, filter -:foo instead of
            -!foo and run "#file" instead
            of "$file", to create unified .
            sh batch files for Windows and
            Linux.
-upat2      same as -upat but also 
            support wildcard % instead of *
            you may also set this by an
            environment variable like: set
            SFK_CONFIG=upat2
-noesckey   disable stop by escape key. 
            (windows only)

file input options
-nosub      or -norec does not include 
                subdirectories (subfolders).
                
            processing of subdirs is 
            DEFAULT with most commands,
            therefore you must specify
            -nosub to switch it off.
-withsub    include subdirs. is DEFAULT 
            with most commands.
-maxsub=n   include contents of up to n 
            subdir levels.
-withdirs   include (sub) folder names in 
            processing.
-justdirs   use just (sub) folder names 
            for processing.
-nofollow   or -nofo does not follow 
                symbolic directory links.
            this option may NOT work with 
            older Linux versions, esp.
            those needing the "lib5" binary
            version of sfk.
-textfiles  process only text files, no 
            binaries. -text is the same,
            but this may interfere with
            command-local -text options.
            text/binary detection only
            checks the file's first 4
            kbytes.
-binfiles   process only binary files. 
            -bin is the same, but this may
            interfere with some command's
            local -bin option.
-hidden     include hidden and system 
            files.
-nohidden   exclude hidden and system 
            files.
-minsize=s  select only files >= size, 
            like 10b or 100k
-maxsize=s  select only files <= size, 
            like 10m or 4g b=bytes k=kbytes
            m=megabytes g=gigabytes=10^9
            bytes K=2^10 bytes M=2^20 bytes
            G=2^30 bytes
-sincedir   or -sincedif/add/chg: compare 
                directory tree against
            a reference tree, process only 
            changed or added files. see
            "sfk list" for details.
-since      process only files changed on 
            or after the supplied date/
            timestamp. "sfk list" for
            details.
-before     process only files changed 
            before that date/timestamp.
-flist fn   or "-fl fn" reads list of 
            filenames from file fn.
-tomake .ext   select only files that 
               have no, or an older,
            counterpart file with extension 
            .ext in the same folder.
-tomake outdir\$base.ext  select only 
files that have no or
            an older counterpart file in 
            outdir with extension .ext. see
            "sfk run" for example: .wav to .
            mp3 conversion
-wchar      activate EXPERIMENTAL utf-16 
            (ucs-2, wide char) decoding,
            allowing sfk find or filter to
            search text in utf-16 files.
            should not be used when
            (re)writing files. get more
            infos by typing "sfk help
            unicode".

text input and filtering options
-case       activate case sensitive text 
            comparison with some commands.
            most text processing commands
            are case-insensitive by default.
            filename comparison is always
            case insensitive. for details
            see: sfk help nocase
-spat       activates interpretation of 
            slash patterns: \t=TAB \q=" \
            r=CR \n=LF \\=\ \xnn=any char w/
            hex code nn with some commands
            like replace, filter -form and
            -replace.
-spats      strict slash patterns, show 
            error on wrong patterns like \a.
            
-literal    or -lit disables 
            interpretation of wildcards *
            and ? and slash patterns, if
            they were activated previously.
-nospat     disables only slash patterns.
-deacc      use accent insensitive text 
            search and filename selection,
            i.e. a == a_accent or o ==
            o_umlaut. may work only with
            some windows code pages, but
            not with utf-8 text.
-binallchars  with binary-to-text 
              conversion, include all
              printable characters, like
              accents or non latin.

network options
-header x   or -head adds custom header x 
                to http requests, like
            -header "Accept-Language: de,
             en-US;q=0.7,en;q=0.3"
            multiple header lines can be 
            given. default headers with the
            same name are replaced.

user information options
-verbose    print additional infos while 
            running a command. helpful if a
            command doesn't work as
            expected. only some commands
            support -verbose. try also
            -verbose=2.
-more       pause output based on 
            terminal height.
-more50     paged output with 50 lines 
            per page. -more is experimental
            and may fail to count exactly.
-quiet      reduce output on some 
            commands. e.g. the find command
            will not display the "scan"
            status info while searching
            files.
-quiet=2    reduce output even more on 
            some commands.
-nowarn     and -noerr, -nonote disable 
                         warn, error and
                         note messages.
-nohead     no not list header/trailer 
            info on some commands: the run
            cmd will not tell "simulating"
            even if it's in simulation mode.
            
-tracechain   tell in detail how the 
              command chain is executed.
-tracesel   give verbose infos why 
            directories and files have been
            selected or excluded.
            -tracedirs lists only
            directories, -tracefiles lists
            only files.
-debug      print extra program flow 
            infos to track errors.
-exectime   tell command execution time 
            at program end.
-headers    print http headers with 
            commands accessing the web.

file output options
-tofile x   specify a single output 
            filename, which is taken as is
            and not checked for any $
            patterns.
-to mask    specify where to write output 
            files with some commands. mask
            supports $file, $path, $relpath,
            $base, $ext and more, like -to
            outdir\$base-modified.$ext say
            "sfk run" for a list of
            possible keywords.
-tmpdir x   set directory x as temporary 
            file directory. default is to
            use the path specified by TEMP
            or TMP env variable.
-showtmp    tell verbosely which 
            temporary files are created.
-keeptmp    do not delete the temporary 
            files, if possible.

terminal output options
-nocol      disable all colored output. 
            important if your shell has a
            background color incompatible
            to the default color scheme, or
            (under linux) if the sfk output
            text must be processed further
            through pipelining, and needs
            to be stripped from the color
            escape sequences.
-col        switch on colored output. 
            "sfk help colors" for more.
-nocconv    when printing output to the 
            windows console, sfk tries to
            convert umlaut and accent
            characters to display them
            correctly with codepage 850.
            set -nocconv to disable this.
            whenever output is redirected
            to file, no conversion is done.
-cconv      force codepage conversions: 
            if command output is redirected
            to a file, codepage conversion
            is disabled by default. use
            this option to activate, e.g.
            when post-processing sfk run
            output which produced filename
            lists.
-html       dump sfk help text (color 
            control) in html format. -html
            must be typed directly after
            "sfk".
-htmlpage   the same, but include a 
            header to view it in a browser.

return code and error options
-showrc     print sfk return code at end 
            of command or program. may not
            print anything in case of fatal
            errors, like wrong syntax
            (usually rc 9).
-justrc     let some commands print 
            nothing and just produce an rc.
-exterr     in case of operating system 
            related errors like file access,
            prints extended error
            information, if available.
-waitonerr  wait for user input on every 
            error.
-waitonend  wait for user input at 
            program end.
-stoponerr  stop directory tree 
            processing on first unreadable
            file. default is to process as
            many files as possible,
            skipping unreadable files and
            directories.
-rcfromerr  some commands like filter, 
            find, hexfind tell by shell rc
            that something was found. by
            default, skipped errors like
            unreadable files do NOT change
            this rc. with -rcfromerr,
            skipped errors do override the
            resulting shell rc.
-echoonerr  echo whole command to stderr 
            when an error occurs. see also
            the SFK_CONFIG setting
            "echoonstart" below.
to experiment with the above options, try 
"sfk errortest".

diverse options
-arc        read contents of well known 
            zip, tar.gz and tar.bz2
            archives as deep as possible,
            including nested archives. well
            known archives must have one of
            these extensions: .zip .jar .
            ear .war .aar .xpi .tar .tar.gz
            .tar.bz2 .tgz .gz .bz2 .docx .
            xlsx .dotx .pptx .odt .ods .otg
            .odp .odg .dotm .docb .xlsm .
            xltx .xltm .pptm .potx .potm .
            ppam .ppsx .ppsm .sldx .sldm .
            odc .odf .odi .odm .ott .ots .
            otp .jmod to include further
            extensions, read below about
            SFK_ZIP_EXT. this binary (SFK
            Base/XD) can read only the
            first 1000 bytes of every
            archive entry. listing of
            contents is not limited. type
            "sfk help xe" for all details
            and restrictions.
-xarc       read contents of any zip file,
            regardless of file extension,
            and tar.gz and tar.bz2 files.
            reads the first bytes of every
            file and will therefore perform
            slower then -arc.
-qarc       quick read top level archives 
            but not nested ones.
-weblimit=n    change web access download 
               limit to n mbytes, with
               functions like sfk web,
               filter, xex. default is 100
               mb. you may also set
               SFK_CONFIG=weblimit:30
-webtimeout=n  web access timeout in msec.
               default is 10000. you may
               also set SFK_C
               ONFIG=webtimeout:3000
-webuser=u     together with -webpw=p set 
               HTTP basic authentication
               with diverse commands
               supporting http:// web
               access.
-memlimit=n set the caching memory limit 
to n mbytes (default=300).
            used if a function needs to 
            load whole files into memory.
            if zip etc. archive processing
            is very slow, it may be caused
            by a cache overflow. try to
            increase the -memlimit then. if
            you think sfk uses too much
            memory while processing files,
            try to reduce -memlimit (values
            below 200 are not recommended).
            you may also set SFK_CONFIG
            (see end of this text).
-cachestat  tell amount of memory used by 
            archive file cache.
-nocache    disable the disk cache (for 
            network files).
-noipex     disable automatic IP 
            expansion with some commands.
-noop       do nothing (no operation). 
            sometimes helpful as a fill-in.

command local versus global scope:

   within a command chain, many options 
   have an effect only locally with the
   command where they are specified, e.g.
   in

      sfk filt x.txt -case -high red 
                       FooCase +filt -high
                       blue TheBar

   the "-case" is valid only for the first 
   filter command. but the following
   options can also be used globally, if
   specified directly after "sfk":

      -nohead -noinfo -nofile -case 
                -literal -spat

   for example, in

      sfk -case filt x.txt -high red 
            FooCase +filt -high blue
            TheBar

   the "-case" is valid for ALL commands in 
   the command chain.

environment configuration: set SFK_CONFIG=columns:n, active-file-age:n,memlimit:n,... columns: sfk (for windows) tries to autodetect the no. of console columns, but you may also set this value through this config parm. active-file-age:n some functions need to tell if a file is 'recently edited' or rather old and inactive. by default, files > 30 days of age are considered non-active. reconfigure the no. of days threshold here. memlimit:n set memory limit to n mbytes. echoonstart: echo the whole sfk command on start, to stderr. echoonerr: echo the whole sfk command on errors, to stderr. tmpdir:path set folder for temporary files, used by some commands. e.g. set SFK_CONFIG=tmpdir:d:\tmp, memlimit:500 set SFK_ZIP_EXT=".foo .bar .myext" set additional, user defined zip file extensions. in this example, files ending with .foo, .bar or .myext are also treated as zip files. for the list of default extensions, look above at the -arc option.

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sfk is a free open-source tool, running instantly without installation efforts. no DLL's, no registry changes - just get sfk.exe from the zip package and use it (binaries for windows, linux and mac are included).

 

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