Quartus II: Searching in all project files

[Altera_Forum]

Hi all, 

 When processing a large project with many files that has been written by someone else you typically need to search for something in all source files to find out where that expression is used. I haven't found a way to do that in Quartus II, have you?  With the Windows installation, the problem is exacerbated by the way how Quartus installer (or something) has registered the file types such as .vhd: The Windows Search doesn't look into them!  So far, I have found no better solution than using an external POSIX-style grep program (e.g. from MINGW package). However, if the source files are in a subdirectory structure, then a simple "grep" won't do but you'll need something more complicated such as   find . -name "*.vhd" -exec grep search_string {} +  Thanks in advance for any ideas for easier searches over multiple source files...  Vesa

[Altera_Forum]

i use grep -ri <term> ./ in a Nios II Command Shell

[Altera_Forum]

Is there still no tool in Quartus for searching across multiple files? 

 I can used "Edit > Find > Mark All (All Files)". This will bookmark all lines containing the text string that I am trying to find. However, Quartus does not tell me which files contain the bookmarks. Is the only solution (within Quartus) to open each project file and see if it contains the bookmark placed there by "Find?

[Altera_Forum]

On Windows I use Windows Grep: 

 http://www.wingrep.com/

[Altera_Forum]

Get a decent text editor. Notepad++ can search through files for phrases.

[Altera_Forum]

Thanks for all those "outside Quartus" solutions. However, it seems a shame that there are no tools "inside Quartus" to do what is needed.

[Altera_Forum]

Quartus allows you to link in your favourite text editor. Altera are in the FPGA business, not the software business. 

Maybe it is a shame, but they would just be competing with everyone else out there.

[Altera_Forum]

I know that the Xilinx Vivado software has a very nice "find in files" tool. Maybe I'll use that. ;-)