Searching For String Literals

Question

In the quest for localization I need to find all the string literals littered amongst our source code. I was looking for a way to script this into a post-modification source repository check. (I.E. after some one checks something in have a box setup to check this stat) I'll probably use NAnt and CruiseControl or something to handle the management of the CVS (Well StarTeam in my case :( ) But do you know of any scriptable (or command line) utility to accurately cycle through source code looking for string literals? I realize I could do simple string look up based on regular expressions but want a little more bang for my buck. (Maybe analyze the string or put it into categories) Because a lot of times the string may not necessarily require translation. Any ideas?

score 39 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 10:29

39

Visual Studio 2010 and earlier:

Find In Files (CTRL+SHIFT+F)
Use: Regular Expressions
Find: :q (quoted string)
Find All

Find Results window will now contain a report of all files, with line numbers and the line itself with the quoted string.

For Visual Studio 2012 and later search for ((\".+?\")|('.+?')) (reference, hat-tip to @CincauHangus)

edited May 23 '17 at 10:29

Community

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answered Oct 02 '08 at 20:32

Duncan Smart

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For newer Visual Studio you should use: ((\".+?\")|('.+?')) reference:http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/vstudio/2k3te2cs(v=vs.110).aspx – CincauHangus Feb 26 '13 at 08:27
For a narrower result use: (? – Jeff Sep 16 '18 at 16:10

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Oct 02 '08 at 20:29

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It uses the compiled binary instead of source, but Sysinternals' Strings app might be useful.

answered Oct 02 '08 at 20:29

Chris Farmer

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gleichdanke · Answer 3 · 2015-04-28T14:45:16.803

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To find all Text="textonly" instances use the following Regular Expression when searching:

(Text=)(")([a-z])

This is help for finding Text="*" but excluding text that's already been converted to use resource files:

Text="<%$ Resources:LocalizedText, KeyNameFromResourceFile%>"

Also (>)([a-z]) can be used to find literals between tags like so:

<h1>HeaderText</h1>

edited Apr 28 '15 at 14:45

answered Apr 28 '15 at 12:44

gleichdanke

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score 1 · Answer 4 · answered Feb 18 '20 at 16:36

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Find In Files (CTRL+SHIFT+F)
Find options -> Check Use Regular Expressions

For specific text within the literal:

Find what: "+.*(MYSPECIFICTEXT)+.*"+

For all literals

Find what: "+.*"+

Then

Find All

answered Feb 18 '20 at 16:36

Kleberson Leite

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score 0 · Answer 5 · answered Oct 02 '08 at 20:27

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There's a C# parser on CodePlex that you can probably use.

answered Oct 02 '08 at 20:27

Mark Cidade

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score 0 · Answer 6 · edited Apr 12 '21 at 09:47

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hi this is regex for searching literals, that I use to find a text for translation. it also includes empty spaces and different quotes

regex:

([",`,'])([\w,\s]*)([",`,'])

searchstring: var test='This is a test';

edited Apr 12 '21 at 09:47

Felipe Lavratti

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answered Oct 29 '19 at 08:25

Edward Koetsjarjan

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Searching For String Literals

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