seekr is an R package designed to help you search for specific patterns within text files.
# Install it directly from CRAN:
install.packages("seekr")
# Or the the development version from GitHub:
# install.packages("pak")
pak::pak("smartiing/seekr")seekr provides two main functions:
seek(): Search for a pattern in files within a
specified directory.seek_in(): Search for a pattern in a given list of
files.Each function returns a tibble with the following columns:
path: Path to the file (relative or absolute).line_number: Line number where the pattern was
found.match: The first match found in the line.matches: All matches found in the line (if matches =
TRUE).line: Content of the matching line.library(seekr)
#>
#> Attaching package: 'seekr'
#> The following object is masked from 'package:base':
#>
#> seek
path = system.file("extdata", package = "seekr")
# Search all function definitions in R files
seek("[^\\s]+(?= (=|<-) function\\()", path, filter = "\\.R$")
#> # A tibble: 6 × 4
#> path line_number match line
#> <fs::path> <int> <chr> <chr>
#> 1 /script1.R 1 add_one add_one <- function(x) {
#> 2 /script1.R 5 capitalize capitalize <- function(txt) {
#> 3 /script1.R 9 say_hello say_hello <- function(name) {
#> 4 /script2.R 2 mean_safe mean_safe <- function(x) {
#> 5 /script2.R 7 sd_safe sd_safe <- function(x) {
#> 6 /script2.R 12 print_vector print_vector <- function(v) {
# Search for usage of "TODO" comments in source code in a case insensitive way
seek("(?i)TODO", path, filter = "\\.R$")
#> # A tibble: 1 × 4
#> path line_number match line
#> <fs::path> <int> <chr> <chr>
#> 1 /script2.R 1 TODO # TODO: optimize this function
# Search for error/warning in log files
seek("(?i)error", path, filter = "\\.log$")
#> # A tibble: 14 × 4
#> path line_number match line
#> <fs::path> <int> <chr> <chr>
#> 1 /server.log 3 ERROR 2025-04-29 21:52:17 ERROR : Starting process
#> 2 /server.log 6 ERROR 2025-04-30 04:15:43 ERROR : Retrying request
#> 3 /server.log 7 ERROR 2025-04-29 13:59:14 ERROR : Failed to authenti…
#> 4 /server.log 10 ERROR 2025-04-30 17:20:48 ERROR : User login failed
#> 5 /server.log 11 ERROR 2025-04-30 11:41:17 ERROR : Starting process
#> 6 /server.log 14 ERROR 2025-04-30 00:15:59 ERROR : Connection success…
#> 7 /server.log 16 ERROR 2025-04-29 20:39:24 ERROR : User login failed
#> 8 /server.log 19 ERROR 2025-04-29 17:51:14 ERROR : Timeout reached
#> 9 /server.log 20 ERROR 2025-04-29 18:27:07 ERROR : Retrying request
#> 10 /server.log 21 ERROR 2025-04-30 16:15:44 ERROR : Disk usage high
#> 11 /server.log 23 ERROR 2025-04-30 17:14:15 ERROR : User login failed
#> 12 /server.log 30 ERROR 2025-04-30 00:03:39 ERROR : Connection success…
#> 13 /server.log 35 ERROR 2025-04-30 17:25:05 ERROR : Connection success…
#> 14 /server.log 40 ERROR 2025-04-29 17:49:55 ERROR : Restart scheduled
# Search for config keys in YAML
seek("database:", path, filter = "\\.ya?ml$")
#> # A tibble: 1 × 4
#> path line_number match line
#> <fs::path> <int> <chr> <chr>
#> 1 /config.yaml 1 database: database:
# Looking for "length" in all types of text files
seek("(?i)length", path)
#> # A tibble: 4 × 4
#> path line_number match line
#> <fs::path> <int> <chr> <chr>
#> 1 /iris.csv 1 Length "\"Sepal.Length\",\"Sepal.Width\",\"Petal.Lengt…
#> 2 /script2.R 3 length " if (length(x) == 0) return(NA)"
#> 3 /script2.R 8 length " if (length(x) <= 1) return(NA)"
#> 4 /script2.R 13 length " print(paste('Vector of length', length(v)))"
# Search for specific CSV headers using seek_in() and reading only the first line
csv_files <- list.files(path, "\\.csv$", full.names = TRUE)
seek_in(csv_files, "(?i)specie", n_max = 1)
#> # A tibble: 1 × 4
#> path line_number match line
#> <fs::path> <int> <chr> <chr>
#> 1 …YzN7t/temp_libpath4cf462766a0b/seekr/extdata/iris.csv 1 Spec… "\"S…This package is licensed under the MIT License.