RegEx Search to Collect the First Line of Multiple Text Files

Here's a description of how you can find the first line of multiple text files using the grep utility, PowerGrep. Beginning with a folder containing these three text files:

. . . in PowerGrep select these files in the 'Folders and Files' section to the left, and then enter

\A.*

. . . in the search box with the Action type set to 'Simple Search' and the Search Type to Regulation Expression.

Click on 'Search' on the toolbar and then check the Results tab.

You'll see that just the first lines of each text file show up. You can copy these right out of PowerGrep into Excel for further parsing.

Regex Search to Collect Lines Before and After String

Use this Regex search:

((.*\r\n){2})discovery

When you want to extract two lines before the string 'discovery'. The regular expression can be varied to collect X number of lines after the string.

discovery((.*\r\n){X})

See these screen grabs showing how to run the Regex search using PowerGrep, which was discussed in the Tip of the Night for October 15, 2015 and the Tip of the Night for June 22, 2015.