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I've been tinkering with an AST based grep tool. (It only works for JS/TS right now). It allows you to search for code in a more free-form way and I hope better

I've been tinkering with an AST based grep tool. (It only works for JS/TS right now). It allows you to search for code in a more free-form way and I hope better code-searching tools like this can come out. Because searching by string is really primitive. (pun intended) Here is an example: npx @nikhilverma/ast-grep '{ meta: { title: "___" }}' src/

inbx0 5y ago
I've been toying with similar idea, also for JS/TS, but I'm struggling to come up with a search term syntax that'd feel even somewhat intuitive. Maybe "function foo" would match all functions named foo, including those defined with const foo = () => and "var foo" would just match all values named foo, including functions? I don't know, I feel like there's lots of edge cases that might make this approach fall apart
slaymaker1907 5y ago
You could check out Semmle. It is trying to solve a similar problem, but with code analysis.
kgeist 5y ago
I have a working prototype for a similar thing for PHP. But I abandoned it for now, as I have no time to improve on it and the query syntax is far from perfect.
zomglings 5y ago
Nice! Have been working on something similar, although my use case is more about learning how code has changed across git commits: https://github.com/bugout-dev/locust https://github.com/bugout-dev/locust For Javascript/Typescript/React support, like you, I hooked into the Babel toolchain. Can't recommend it highly enough. There's also a newish project called quick-lint-js which seems to have written their own from-scratch AST parser for JS, but I haven't tried it yet: https://github.com/quick-lint/quick-lint-js https://github.com/quick-lint/quick-lint-js Finally, another project that I know in this space is comby (I believe it is owned/maintained by the folks at Sourcegraph): https://comby.dev/ https://comby.dev/ Don't know why I dumped all those links there. Just figured there may be something useful in them for you. Am also just super passionate about building knowledge about code bases by analyzing their ASTs. Nice to meet a fellow enthusiast. :)
- NikhilVerma 5y ago
  Thank you! It's amazing to see so much work going into tools like this :) I am a huge fan of AST and AST based tools. I think there is so much to explore in this space.

inbx0 5y ago

I've been toying with similar idea, also for JS/TS, but I'm struggling to come up with a search term syntax that'd feel even somewhat intuitive. Maybe "function foo" would match all functions named foo, including those defined with const foo = () => and "var foo" would just match all values named foo, including functions? I don't know, I feel like there's lots of edge cases that might make this approach fall apart

slaymaker1907 5y ago

You could check out Semmle. It is trying to solve a similar problem, but with code analysis.

kgeist 5y ago

I have a working prototype for a similar thing for PHP. But I abandoned it for now, as I have no time to improve on it and the query syntax is far from perfect.

zomglings 5y ago

Nice! Have been working on something similar, although my use case is more about learning how code has changed across git commits: https://github.com/bugout-dev/locust https://github.com/bugout-dev/locust For Javascript/Typescript/React support, like you, I hooked into the Babel toolchain. Can't recommend it highly enough. There's also a newish project called quick-lint-js which seems to have written their own from-scratch AST parser for JS, but I haven't tried it yet: https://github.com/quick-lint/quick-lint-js https://github.com/quick-lint/quick-lint-js Finally, another project that I know in this space is comby (I believe it is owned/maintained by the folks at Sourcegraph): https://comby.dev/ https://comby.dev/ Don't know why I dumped all those links there. Just figured there may be something useful in them for you. Am also just super passionate about building knowledge about code bases by analyzing their ASTs. Nice to meet a fellow enthusiast. :)

NikhilVerma 5y ago
Thank you! It's amazing to see so much work going into tools like this :) I am a huge fan of AST and AST based tools. I think there is so much to explore in this space.