PowerGREP is the king of this. However, it demands a King's ransom. That said, the $159 is cheap if you need that power. Add that to regexbuddy and your search for things is pretty powerful.
-wraith808
I keep telling myself that PowerGREP would be total overkill for anything I might want to do. It's blatantly obvious, I shouldn't have to tell myself even once.
But,
It also strikes me that having it would mean I'd never have to think about the best way of doing a lot of things. And not having to think can be quite valuable.
-Dormouse
In my job I had to do this a lot. Not as much now, but I did before I moved into more of an architectural position rather than coding. I got regexbuddy to preserve my sanity long before I convinced them to get it for the other devs. I put off getting this because of sticker shock. Looking back on things- I got things done. But this would have paid for itself many times over. It still could, in all honesty.
But it's rare other than IDEs I pay that much for software.
Those lusting after PowerGREP, but unable to stomach the price: don't overlook BareGrep, which is much more affordable and very, very fast. Has been mentioned on DC before (long ago).
-rjbull
That does look cool. Still lusting after PowerGREP because of the integrated editing...