"worst case is trying to develop some small utility like a tool to search in files using regex" - you mean something like: https://wiki.tcl-lang.org/page/ReacTcl+example%3A+Grv ?

This will run on Windows, Linux, MacOS, and Tcl's starkit/starpack system makes it easy to generate a single executable file for each OS that can just be copied over and run without any installation needed.