grep-ast

Grep source code files and see matching lines with useful context that show how they fit into the code. See the loops, functions, methods, classes, etc that contain all the matching lines. Get a sense of what's inside a matched class or function definition. You see relevant code from every layer of the abstract syntax tree, above and below the matches.

By default, grep-AST recurses the current directory to search all source code files. It respects .gitignore, so it will usually "do the right thing" in most repos if you just do grep-ast <regex> without specifying any filenames.

You can also invoke grep-ast as gast for convenience.

Grep-AST is built with tree-sitter and tree-sitter-languages. So it supports a lot of popular code languages.

Install

python -m pip install git+https://github.com/paul-gauthier/grep-ast.git

Usage

Basic usage:

grep-ast [pattern] [filenames...]

Full options list:

usage: grep_ast.py [-h] [-i] [--color] [--no-color] [--encoding ENCODING] [--languages] [--verbose]
                   [pat] [filenames ...]

positional arguments:
  pat                  the pattern to search for
  filenames            the files to display

options:
  -h, --help           show this help message and exit
  -i, --ignore-case    ignore case distinctions
  --color              force color printing
  --no-color           disable color printing
  --encoding ENCODING  file encoding
  --languages          print the parsers table
  --verbose            enable verbose output

Examples

Here we search for "encoding" in the source to this tool. These results mainly highlight how grep-ast shows you how the matches fit into the code base.

Here we search for "TreeContext" in the source to this tool. These results mainly highlight how grep-ast helps you understand the contents of a matching named code block (class, function, method, etc).

Release files for grep-ast 0.9.0

For a detailed explanation of source distributions (sdists) and built distributions (wheels), please see the package formats documentation.

Source distribution (sdist)

Source distribution for grep-ast 0.9.0
File	Size	Uploaded
grep_ast-0.9.0.tar.gz	14.1 kB	May 8, 2025	Details

Built distribution (wheel)

Table of built distributions (wheels) for grep-ast 0.9.0
File	Interpreter	ABI	Platform	Reset
grep_ast-0.9.0-py3-none-any.whl 13.9 kB May 8, 2025	Python 3	none	any	Details

Total release size: 28.0 kB

Release files / grep_ast-0.9.0.tar.gz

Download URL	grep_ast-0.9.0.tar.gz
Size	14.1 kB
Tags	Source
SHA-256 checksum How to use checksums	`620a242a4493e6721338d1c9a6c234ae651f8774f4924a6dcf90f6865d4b2ee3`
BLAKE2b-256 checksum How to use checksums	`6782a87079945a7c15d242cb586ae22e17952132439eaa9c878ec5fbdc61c54d`
Upload date	May 8, 2025
Uploaded using Trusted Publishing? What is trusted publishing?	No
Uploaded via	`twine/6.1.0 CPython/3.12.6`

Release files / grep_ast-0.9.0-py3-none-any.whl

Download URL	grep_ast-0.9.0-py3-none-any.whl
Size	13.9 kB
Tags	Python 3
SHA-256 checksum How to use checksums	`a3973dca99f1abc026a01bbbc70e00a63860c8ff94a56182ff18b089836826d7`
BLAKE2b-256 checksum How to use checksums	`407929f1373b2ce1eec37c03aefbc17194c2470d8b61ede288e5043231825999`
Upload date	May 8, 2025
Uploaded using Trusted Publishing? What is trusted publishing?	No
Uploaded via	`twine/6.1.0 CPython/3.12.6`