I am very excited and thankful to share with you that ast-grep, a code search and transformation tool that I have been working on for the past year, has recently reached 3000 stars on GitHub! This is a remarkable achievement for the project and I am deeply grateful for all the support and feedback that I have received from the open source community.

What is ast-grep?

ast-grep is a tool that allows you to search and transform code using abstract syntax trees (ASTs). ASTs are tree-like representations of the structure and meaning of source code. By using ASTs, ast-grep can perform more accurate and powerful operations than regular expressions or plain text search.

ast-grep supports multiple programming languages, such as JavaScript, TypeScript, Python, Ruby, Java, C#, Rust, and more. You can write patterns and rules in YAML format to specify what you want to match and how you want to transform it. You can also use the command-line interface (CLI) or the web-based playground to run ast-grep on your code.

Why use ast-grep?

ast-grep can help you with many tasks that involve code search and transformation, such as:

• Finding and fixing bugs, vulnerabilities, or code smells
• Refactoring or migrating code to a new syntax or framework
• Enforcing or checking coding standards or best practices
• Analyzing various code using a uniform interface

ast-grep can save you time and effort by automating repetitive or tedious tasks that would otherwise require manual editing or complex scripting.

What’s new in ast-grep?

ast-grep is constantly evolving and improving thanks to the feedback and contributions from the users and sponsors. Here are some of the recent changes and updates of ast-grep:

• ast-grep’s YAML rule now has a new transform rule: conversion, which can change matches to different cases, such as upper, lower, or camelcase.
• ast-grep’s diff/rewriting now can fix multiple rules at once. See commit
• sg test -fnow accepts regex to selectively run ast-grep’s test case.
• sg --json supports multiple formats that powers telescope-sg, a neovim plugin that integrates ast-grep with telescope.
• ast-grep now prints matches with context like grep -A -B -C. See issue
• JSON schema is added for better YAML rule editing. See folder
• ast-grep now has official github action setup! See action
• New documentation for rewriting code, example catalogs, and playground.

What’s next for ast-grep?

ast-grep has many plans and goals for the future to make it more useful and user-friendly. Here are some of the upcoming features and enhancements of ast-grep:

• Add python api support to allow users to write custom scripts using ast-grep. See issue
• Support global language config to let users specify default options for each language. See issue
• Improve napi documentation to help users understand how to use the native node module of ast-grep. See issue
• Add metavar filter to make sg run more powerful by allowing users to filter matches based on metavariable values. See issue
• Add ast-grep’s pattern/rule tutorial to teach users how to write effective and efficient patterns and rules for ast-grep. See issue
• Add examples to ast-grep’s reference page to illustrate the usage and functionality of each option and feature. See issue

How to get involved?

If you are interested in ast-grep and want to try it out, you can install it from npm or GitHub. You can also visit the website to learn more about the features, documentation, and examples of ast-grep.

If you want to contribute to the code or documentation of ast-grep, we have prepared a thorough contribution guide for you! You can also report issues, suggest features, or ask questions on the issue tracker.

Thank you!

I hope you are as enthusiastic as I am about the progress and future of ast-grep. I sincerely value your feedback, suggestions, and contributions. Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions or comments.

Thank you for your wonderful support. You are making a difference in the open source community and in the lives of many developers who use ast-grep.