> What we should have instead is syntax-aware diffs that can ignore meaningless changes like curly braces moving into another line or lines getting wrapped for reasons. These diffs already exist (at least for some languages) but aren't yet integrated into the standard tools. For example, if you want a command line tool, you can use https://github.com/Wilfred/difftastic a try. - Source: Hacker News / 4 months ago

Looking at the architecture, they will probably run into some issues. We are doing something similar with SemanticDiff [1] and also started out using tree-sitter grammars for parsing and GumTree for matching. Both choices turned out to be problematic. Tree sitter grammars are primarily written to support syntax highlighting and often use a best effort approach to parsing. This is perfectly fine for syntax... - Source: Hacker News / 7 months ago

I am working on SemanticDiff, a programming language aware diff that hides style-only changes, detects moved code and refactorings. I just added support for Rust and would like to know what you think! Source: over 1 year ago

If you're looking for a VS Code extension or a GitHub app, check out https://semanticdiff.com/. I'm a co-founder of this project. If you prefer a CLI tool, check out https://github.com/Wilfred/difftastic. It supports more languages, but doesn't recognize when code has been replaced by an equivalent version ("invariances"). So it will show some changes (e.g.... - Source: Hacker News / over 1 year ago

There are some tools that can separate actual code changes from reformatting changes. I am working on https://semanticdiff.com, a VS Code Extension / GitHub App that can help you with this. There is also difftastic if you prefer a CLI based solution. It supports more languages but can detect fewer types of reformatting changes. - Source: Hacker News / over 1 year ago

One useful tool beyond regular grep for counting the number of times a pattern appears is ast-grep [1], which allows for more sophisticated rules. [1] https://ast-grep.github.io/. - Source: Hacker News / 4 months ago

The amazing ast-grep tool does not support vue and scss by default but can be configured to do so. - Source: dev.to / 5 months ago

Hi! ast-grep[1] author here. It is a tree-sitter based syntax tool to search tool. I wonder how you transition from tree-sitter to other builtin parsers? Tree-sitter gave a unified interface to all languages. Using language native parsers will require significant work for various FFI if I am not wrong. [1]: https://ast-grep.github.io/. - Source: Hacker News / 7 months ago

I’ve been looking at codemod tools recently, just as a way to extend my editing toolbox. I came across https://ast-grep.github.io/, which looks like it might address part of this problem. My initial test case was to locate all calls to a method where a specific argument was ‘true’, and it handled that well - that’s the kind of thing an IDE seems to struggle with. I’m not yet sure whether it could handle renaming a... - Source: Hacker News / 9 months ago

Astgrep is a very useful tool. https://ast-grep.github.io/ It's not as easy to use as grep but I think one can script it to be nearly so. It has huge power but without learning it all one can do searches that grep finds difficult. e.g. Finding all the locations where a method is called and showing the parameters even if they are on multiple lines. Ultragrep - I don't love this quite as much but it does have a way... - Source: Hacker News / 9 months ago