nice tip, I'm always thinking 'didn't I write something that does this a while a go' and then having to go rooting for it project by project.

I haven't used grep since installing MS Desktop Search - it works great.
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If you've got a large codebase and a large team, a better solution would be to set up a dedicated index server. That way, you only need one index for your entire team, and only need to keep one index up to date.
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<br>The MS Indexing Service is built into Windows (since Win2k). Install the C++ IFilter from the VC Powertools (<a target="_new" href="http://www.gotdotnet.com/team/cplusplus/">http://www.gotdotnet.com/team/cplusplus/</a>), and create a catalog that points to your source. You can then use the GUI or command-line client (also in the VC Powertools) to search the catalog across the network.
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<br>I wrote a VS.net plugin to automate the searching process a while back. My team here at work loves it. I might release it if I can convince my employer...
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Ian, indeed having a dedicated server for this would be an elegant solution.
<br>Will have a look.
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Or, you can use ReSharper. (<a target="_new" href="http://www.jetbrains.com/resharper">http://www.jetbrains.com/resharper</a>)

We have been using a unix port of grep for this and it has worked great.

You have findstr on windows.

Have you actually tried using MSN Desktop search (or Google Search) for code?
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<br>We've tried both only to find that it often will not find all instances of things we've searched for in our codebase.
<br>(especially in ASP files, for some reason).
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<br>Not very useful if you can't trust it.
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