You might also want to look at "ack" which can be used as an alternative to rgrep: http://betterthangrep.com We have used it from Emacs on several platforms, including Windows, and it works very well for us (on Windows it would require installing one of the free Perl packages - which is not difficult at all). Warm regards, Stefan On 12.04.2012, at 11:29, Eli Zaretskii wrote: >> From: Steinar Bang >> Date: Thu, 12 Apr 2012 11:21:41 +0200 >> >> Platform: emacs 23.2.1, >> GnuWin32 FindUtils 4.2.20-2 >> GnuWin32 Grep-2.5.4 > > What version of Windows is that? > >> Does anyone know of a way to make the emacs rgrep command work on >> windows? > > First, try Emacs 23.3 or later, there were some changes made there to > fix problems with very long command lines, perhaps you are hitting > that limit. If that doesn't help, maybe advice below will. > > "M-x rgrep" works for me on Windows XP, but I use Fiindutils that I > built myself, as the GnuWin32 provided port is broken (in particular, > xargs is affected). You can find my port here: > > http://sourceforge.net/projects/ezwinports/files/ > > However, lately someone told me that my build doesn't work well on > Windows Vista and later, because Microsoft changed the way quoted > wildcards are processed by the startup code that globs them: now > wildcards are globbed even if they are quoted. If you are using such > a new version of Windows, the only solution I know of is to downgrade > to an even older version 4.1 of Findutils from here: > > http://unxutils.sourceforge.net/ > > I think someone told me that this port does work on newer Windows > versions. > > HTH > -- Dr. Stefan Vollmar, Dipl.-Phys. Head of IT group Max-Planck-Institut für neurologische Forschung Gleueler Str. 50, 50931 Köln, Germany Tel.: +49-221-4726-213 FAX +49-221-4726-298 Tel.: +49-221-478-5713 Mobile: 0160-93874279 E-Mail: vollmar@nf.mpg.de http://www.nf.mpg.de