> Is there a way to search within a file for spaces/wild characters?
>
> I want to find an 8 followed by a number surrounded by spaces.
> IOW " 8|D " [VEdit syntax]
>
> Thanks
> W

Walt

The nearest that ZTree supports is the * wildcard, but that matches any number of characters, i.e. search for this without the quotes
" 8* "
It wouldn't be so bad if the ? (single character) wildcard was also supported, which would lead to fewer false positives for your requirement.


Note:
File spec supports "Enclose a group or range of characters" (search the help), enter like this
Space,Alt-[,0123456789,Alt-],Space
but file search does not support it, so no good for your requirement, you could ZEP for file search to support that, or as I would like regular expressions, that would need a F? toggle or a "RE:" prefix in the search string, as many people don't like/understand regular expressions.


For non-ZTree commandline ways, which could be run from eXecute or the F9 menu

Pure Windows
findstr /r /C:" 8[0-9] " C:\dir\*.*
That has very basic RE support.

Powershell, but only suitable for small files
Get-ChildItem -Path C:\dir -File | % {$a=$_; Write-Host $a.fullname; Get-Content -path $a.fullname -force | Where-Object {$_ -match ' 8\d '} }
Powershell uses .Net and so has rich RE support.


As GoSlow2GoFast suggested dedicated grep like tools will probably be quicker.

Ben