Report Options
dnGrep provides four choices for saving the results from a search:
- Report
- Text results
- CSV results
- Copy Results (copies the search results in the Text format to the clipboard)
These choices are found on the More ⏷ button menu after a search is run.
The Report format includes information about the search parameters, and result lines with context. This report is not customizable.
The Text and CSV report formats may be customized using the Report options… found on the More ⏷ button menu. Most of the report options apply only to regular expression searches, but some are used when other search types have been run. See below for more information.
To use the report options, open the dialog, modify the selections, save your choices, then go back to the More ⏷ button menu to create the report in the desired format. Clicking Save will save the options to used when writing the Text and CSV reports and those options will continue to be used until changed again.
The Report options dialog includes a preview of the report to be generated but is limited to just the first several lines of the report.
The Full lines, Matches only or Capture groups only choice only applies to Regular expressions. For all other search types, the output is Full lines. Matches only will write just the matched text and is similar to the traditional command line grep option --only-matching. Capture groups only will write out just the content of the Regular expression capture groups.
Include file and line information can be used with any search type. Where and how the file and line information will be added depends on the report type and the other report options as shown in the report preview.
The Trim whitespace option will remove leading whitespace from the result text. This option is also used with any search type.
Filter for unique values applies only to Regular expression searches and when Matches only or Capture groups only is selected. The scope of the unique filter can be unique within a file, or unique across all files in the search results.
Show each match or group on a separate line applies when Matches only or Capture groups only is selected. This rearranges the output to group the matches or groups by line, or in a list.
The Separator for multiple matches or groups on a line applies when Matches only or Capture groups only is selected and they are shown on the same output line. The separator may be nothing, a single character such as space, comma or semi-colon, or multiple characters.
All of these options may also be set from command line arguments.
The Text or CSV selection changes the preview but is not saved and does not affect the report output.