but find does not cut it in this situation as it will provide a false positive since it does not support regular expressions, the concept of an exact match, or any idea of beginning or end of line.

to be honest findstr may be available on a NT4 etc machine but I cant remember. I can only say for definite that findstr appears on xp and 2000.

And again grep is also an alternative that I would end up using as I am used to using it but findstr is just as suitable and may be available as part of the OS