In keeping with the theme of our previous Curious Finding, our next one will further empower you with more control over the files on your system, through search.

While having the ability to search for a file on a system and instantly know whether or not it exists is an extremely useful thing to have, our previous Curious Finding: Everything doesn't provide the functionality needed to search within files, like Windows Search does, and so does not give you enough control over your files as you'll only be able to search for things by their name.

Now, you could go back to Windows Search out of spite towards Everything for not including such basic functionality (although that's probably one of the reasons why it is so fast) but why would you, when our next Curious Finding, AstroGrep, will fill the void that Everything has left? And be just as fast as Everything?

While this program would more likely be useful to Developers than the average person, I've already found some uses for it that have nothing at all to do with programming: searching chat logs for a phrase I'm looking for or just finding a file that contains a piece of information I need, but forgot where I put it, for starters.

Still, I believe you could use this Curious Finding to do the same thing Everything does, albeit by searching the contents of files, rather than their names. Don't quote me on that, though, as I have not tested that theory yet. I have, however, been using this program to search for key snippets of code within applications that span a few thousand files and receiving my results without delay so I don't see why my theory would be inaccurate.

So, if you're already enjoying the instant and powerful searching Everything provides but miss the ability to search within your files, take a look at AstroGrep. You won't be disappointed.

One of the deciding factors in my making this a Curious Finding is that, while there are a few hundred applications that allow you to do a similar thing, most of them are incredibly expensive and stubbornly attached to sister products (like PowerGREP) or don't provide everything that AstroGrep does, for the same price: free.

Here's a small tip for those of you who want to use AstroGrep with Notepad++ that will enable you to double click on a result in AstroGrep and open up the appropriate file in Notepad++ with the exact matching line highlighted:

1. Open up AstroGrep
2. Click on Tools -> Options (or press F9)
3. Click on the Text Editors tab
4. Click Add...
5. File Type: *
6. Text Editor Location: the path to notepad++
7. Command Line: -n%2 %1
8. When done, the Text Editors dialog should look like this:

System Requirements: Windows 9x, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows 2003 and Windows Vista. Version 1.1+ of the .NET framework is required as well.

License: AstroGrep is completely free AND open source.

Screenshot:

Download: [AstroGrep]