Strings….nice tool. In Unix/Linux, there is a utility called “strings” which you can use to search files/directories for strings (duh). Anyways, if you want it for Windows XP, you can download it at sysinternals (along with a ton of other cool tools.) I use it alot…for example: In Visual Studio.NET, you can set words to use in comments that will show up in a task list, like ‘TODO, ‘HACK’, etc…and then that line with show up in your task list. Well, when I have to do any classic ASP coding, I use textpad, and it doesnt have a cool task feature like that. If I still use those words, I can mimic a task list. So in my ASP code, I write
‘TODO: Add more logging
and various others on all pages in an application. Then, when I want to build a task list, I fire up cmd.exe, and type
>strings -s serverdirectory | find “‘TODO”
and it will list out every page and line that I have written that. Very cool.
There are tons of other unique uses for this utility also, you should check it out.
Steve Novoselac's Blog 