btw_tool_files_code_search: Tool: Code Search in Project

In btw: A Toolkit for Connecting R and Large Language Models

Tool: Code Search in Project

Description

Search through code files in the project directory for specific terms.

Usage

btw_tool_files_code_search(
  term,
  limit = 100,
  case_sensitive = TRUE,
  use_regex = FALSE,
  show_lines = FALSE,
  `_intent` = ""
)

Arguments

term	The term to search for in the code files.
limit	Maximum number of matching lines to return (between 1 and 1000, default 100).
case_sensitive	Whether the search should be case-sensitive (default is FALSE).
use_regex	Whether to interpret the search term as a regular expression (default is FALSE).
show_lines	Whether to show the matching lines in the results. Defaults to FALSE, which means only the file names and count of matching lines are returned.
_intent	An optional string describing the intent of the tool use. When the tool is used by an LLM, the model will use this argument to explain why it called the tool.

Details

Options

You can configure which file extensions are included and which paths are excluded from code search by using two options:

• btw.files_code_search.extensions: A character vector of file extensions to search in (default includes R, Python, JavaScript, TypeScript, Markdown, SCSS, and CSS files).

• btw.files_code_search.exclusions: A character vector of gitignore-style patterns to exclude paths and directories from the search. The default value includes a set of common version control, IDE, and cache folders.

Alternatively, you can also set these options in your btw.md file under the options section, like this:

---
client:
  provider: anthropic
tools: [files_code_search]
options:
  files_code_search:
    extensions: ["R", "Rmd", "py", "qmd"]
    exclusions: ["DEFAULT", ".quarto/"]
---

Include "DEFAULT" in the exclusions option to use btw's default exclusions, which cover common directories like ⁠.git/⁠, ⁠.vscode/⁠.

If the gert package is installed and the project is a Git repository, the tool will also respect the .gitignore file and exclude any ignored paths, regardless of the btw.files_code_search.exclusions option.

Value

Returns a tool result with a data frame of search results, with columns for filename, size, last_modified, content and line.

See Also

Other Tools: btw_tool_docs_package_news(), btw_tool_env_describe_data_frame(), btw_tool_env_describe_environment(), btw_tool_files_list_files(), btw_tool_files_read_text_file(), btw_tool_files_write_text_file(), btw_tool_ide_read_current_editor(), btw_tool_package_docs, btw_tool_search_packages(), btw_tool_session_package_info(), btw_tool_session_platform_info(), btw_tool_web_read_url(), btw_tools()

Examples

withr::with_tempdir({
  writeLines(state.name[1:25], "state_names_1.md")
  writeLines(state.name[26:50], "state_names_2.md")

  tools <- btw_tools("files_code_search")
  tools$btw_tool_files_code_search(
    term = "kentucky",
    case_sensitive = FALSE,
    show_lines = TRUE
  )
})

btw documentation built on Nov. 5, 2025, 7:45 p.m.