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'File/Folder Handling - Search for a string on all text files in a directory
' For each TXT file that contains the search string, the function
' returns a Variant element that contains a 3-item array that holds
' the filename, the line number, and the column number.
' NOTE: all searches are case insensitive.
Function SearchTextFiles(path As String, search As String) As Variant()
    Dim fso As New Scripting.FileSystemObject
    Dim fil As Scripting.File, ts As Scripting.TextStream
    Dim pos As Long, count As Long
    ReDim result(50) As Variant
 
    ' Search for all the TXT files in the directory.
    For Each fil In fso.GetFolder(path).Files
        If UCase$(fso.GetExtensionName(fil.path)) = "TXT" Then
            ' Get the corresponding TextStream object.
            Set ts = fil.OpenAsTextStream(ForReading)
            ' Read its contents, search the string, close it.
            pos = InStr(1, ts.ReadAll, search, vbTextCompare)
            ts.Close
 
            If pos > 0 Then
                ' If the string has been found, reopen the file
                ' to determine string position in terms of (line,column).
                Set ts = fil.OpenAsTextStream(ForReading)
                ' Skip all preceding characters to get where
                ' the search string is.
                ts.Skip pos - 1
                ' Fill the result array, make room if necessary.
                count = count + 1
                If count > UBound(result) Then
                    ReDim Preserve result(UBound(result) + 50) As Variant
                End If
                ' Each result item is a 3-element array.
                result(count) = Array(fil.path, ts.Line, ts.Column)
                ' Now we can close the TextStream.
                ts.Close
            End If
        End If
    Next
 
    ' Resize the result array to indicate number of matches.
    ReDim Preserve result(0 To count) As Variant
    SearchTextFiles = result
End Function
 
' An example that uses the above routine: search for a name in all
' the TXT files in E:\DOCS directory, show the results in
' the lstResults ListBox, in the format "filename [line, column]".
'Dim v() As Variant, i As Long
'v() = SearchTextFiles("E:\docs", "Francesco Balena")
'For i = 1 To UBound(v)
'    lstResults.AddItem v(i)(0) & " [" & v(i)(1) & "," & v(i)(2) & "]"
'Next