Looking for a powerful string search app

[Perishingflames]

Hi,

I'm looking for an application with the ability to search matching strings (as designated as anything between a set "prefix" and "suffix") and display them (or what would even be BETTER is if it could write them to a text file).

I've looked into text wrangler and it doesn't fit my needs because it can only do it on a file-by-file basis: I am looking for an app that you can point it to a directory and it does this process for all text files in this directory.

Additionally, if it could do two strings as a time (and group them according to the text file, so I could differentiate), that would be even better.

Does anyone know of an app that can do this? If not, is it possible this process be coded (javascript, php, etc)?

Thanks,
Aaron

 

[djackmac]

Good time to learn Unix. There are many powerful search commands built into Unix with endless parameters that could be set. Two commands that come to mind are sed and grep. Open terminal and man sed and grep to get an idea of what can be done.