string-le

Get every string value in a codebase out into one place a person can read: the QA lead checking messages, the reviewer looking for a claim the product may not make, the localisation owner finding what never reached a catalog.

npx strings-le src/
npx strings-le --values --dedupe src/ > strings.txt
cat config.toml | npx strings-le --stdin --format toml

This is the same command line as the Rust crate string-le, and it behaves identically: same flags, same walk, same output, same exit codes. Install whichever toolchain you already have. The one difference is the words a parser uses to refuse a broken document: both report it as unparsed under the same Invalid JSON: prefix, and the rest is each parser's own description.

The package is strings-le because npm holds string-le too close to an older name. The command it installs is string-le, the same as the crate's.

What it reads

Every file. JSON, JSONC, YAML, CSV, TSV, TOML, INI and dotenv are parsed; Python, Rust, Go, shell, PHP, Ruby, Perl, C#, JavaScript and TypeScript are read by their own string syntax; anything else falls back to quoted runs and is reported as format fallback. Keys are never values. Directories are walked the way ripgrep walks them: .gitignore, .ignore and hidden files are respected unless you pass --no-ignore or --hidden. A binary file is passed over and counted in the summary.

It reports what is there and nothing else. Which strings matter is yours to decide.

Output

stdout carries one JSON report per file whenever it is piped or redirected, and nothing when it is a terminal. stderr carries the human summary. --values prints just the values, one per line, wherever stdout goes.

{"file":"src/messages.ts","format":"typescript","strings":[{"value":"Delete this file?","line":1,"column":25},{"value":"Saved ${count} items","line":2,"column":22}],"diagnostics":[],"summary":{"strings":2,"unlocated":0}}

Columns count UTF-16 code units, as an editor does. A value the source never spells literally, such as a resolved escape or a folded YAML block, carries no line or column, and summary.unlocated counts them.

Exit codes

grep's convention:

• 0: strings found.
• 1: none found. That is an answer, not an error.
• 2: the question was malformed, or --strict and a text file could not be read.

For agents

string-le mcp serves the Model Context Protocol on stdio with two tools: extract_strings for a document's text and string_le_scan for files and directories. Hosts that want the server alone can install string-le-mcp.

string-le --help lists every option.

MIT licensed. Part of letools.