Pull every string value out of the current file in one keystroke
JSON/JSONC, YAML, CSV/TSV, TOML, INI, Environment files, and ten source languages
Useful? A star or rating is how other developers find it — ★ GitHub · ★ Open VSX · ★ Marketplace
Open a file, press Ctrl+Alt+E (Cmd+Alt+E on Mac), and every string value in the document lands in a new editor — deduplicate and sort it from there. Works in VS Code and in VS Code–based editors like Cursor and VSCodium (installable from Open VSX).
- i18n prep — flatten locale files (JSON/YAML) into a clean list of translatable values
- Config review — see every string value in a TOML/INI/.env file at a glance
- CSV mining — pull one column, several, or all of them; stream very large files
| Where | What you get | Install |
|---|---|---|
| VS Code | The same extraction, in your editor, on a keystroke | Marketplace |
| Cursor, VSCodium, Windsurf | The same extension | Open VSX |
| A terminal or a CI step | The same run over a whole tree, with exit codes | cargo install string-le · crates.io |
| Any MCP agent, via Node | extract_strings over stdio |
npx string-le-mcp · npm |
| Zed | The MCP server as a context server | add it by hand (no listing yet) |
The same engine runs as an MCP server, so an agent can call it directly instead of you running a command.
| Editor | How |
|---|---|
| VS Code 1.101+ | Nothing to install — the extension registers extract_strings with agent mode |
| Zed | No listing yet — add the MCP server by hand |
| Claude Code | claude mcp add string-le -- npx -y string-le-mcp |
| Cursor, Windsurf, anything else | point it at npx string-le-mcp |
extract_strings(content, format?, filename?, dedupe?, maxResults?)
Returns the values in document order, capped at 500 by default with meta.truncated. A format is optional — any unrecognised format falls back to quoted strings.
The server takes content and returns data — it reads no files and makes no network requests of its own. Published as string-le-mcp on npm and as io.github.nolindnaidoo/string-le in the MCP registry.
Configuring it by hand — any host with an MCP config file
Most hosts read a JSON config. Add one entry:
{
"mcpServers": {
"string-le": {
"command": "npx",
"args": ["-y", "string-le-mcp"]
}
}
}-y skips the install prompt on first run. Pin a version if you would rather not track releases — [email protected].
Prefer not to go through npx on every launch? Install it once and point at the binary instead:
npm install -g string-le-mcp{
"mcpServers": {
"string-le": { "command": "string-le-mcp" }
}
}It speaks MCP over stdio and needs no environment variables, no API key and no configuration of its own. To check it before wiring it into anything:
echo '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":1,"method":"tools/list"}' | npx -y string-le-mcpThat prints the tool list and exits — if you see extract_strings, the server works.
| Format | Language IDs | What gets extracted |
|---|---|---|
| JSON | json |
String values (parsed; keys, numbers, and booleans excluded) |
| YAML | yaml |
String values including unquoted plain scalars, block/folded scalars, and multi-document files |
| CSV | csv |
Cells, with optional header handling, column selection, and a streaming mode for large files |
| TOML | toml |
String values including multiline strings; dates and numbers are excluded as typed values |
| INI | ini |
Values (INI is untyped, so numeric-looking values are extracted as strings) |
| Environment | dotenv, env |
Values (export prefixes, quotes, and inline comments handled) |
| Python | python |
Triple-quoted docstrings as one string, f-strings, r/b/u prefixes |
| Rust | rust |
Raw strings r"…", r#"…"#, r##"…"## as one string with their inner quotes; byte strings |
| Go | go |
Backtick raw strings as one string, across lines |
| Shell | shellscript |
Heredocs (<<EOF, <<'EOF', <<-EOF) as one string |
| PHP, Ruby, Perl | php, ruby, perl |
Heredocs and nowdocs (<<<EOT, <<<'NOW', <<~EOS) as one string |
| C# | csharp |
Verbatim @"…" where "" is one quote; interpolated $"…" |
| JavaScript, TypeScript | javascript, typescript (+ the react ids) |
Template literals as one string, interpolation and nesting included |
| Markdown, anything else | markdown |
Fallback scan for "double", 'single', or `backtick` quoted strings on a single line |
Values are trimmed; empty values are dropped; keys are never extracted — one rule, shared by every extractor above. The fallback scan cannot see unquoted or multi-line strings, which is why the parsed formats and the source languages get real readers. Parse errors are silent unless string-le.showParseErrors is on.
The same extraction runs from a terminal or a shell pipeline: a Rust CLI
in crate/, sharing one corpus with the extension —
crate/fixtures/ — so the two can never read a
document differently.
string-le . # every string in the tree, as JSON
string-le --values src/ # just the values, one per line
string-le --dedupe --values . # each distinct string once
string-le mcp # the same extraction over MCP on stdio
# the point of the whole thing:
string-le --values --dedupe src/ | sort > after.txt
diff before.txt after.txt # what changed in the copy this releaseThe reader is not the author. The extension answers for the buffer you have open. Someone still has to read every user-visible string before a release — a QA lead, a compliance reviewer, a localisation owner — and they do not have the editor open, and several of them cannot be handed a checkout at all. The CLI puts the whole repository into one file they can read.
Source files are the main event there. A .ts or .py file is where
the user-facing copy lives, so each language is read by its own literal
syntax and anything still unrecognised falls through to quoted-string
extraction rather than being refused.
Exit codes follow grep — 0 strings found, 1 none found, 2 the question was malformed — so finding nothing is an answer rather than an error.
| Command | Description |
|---|---|
String-LE: Extract Strings (Ctrl+Alt+E / Cmd+Alt+E) |
Extract all string values from the active document |
String-LE: Deduplicate Strings |
Remove duplicate lines from the active document |
String-LE: Sort Strings |
Sort lines alphabetically or by length |
String-LE: Toggle CSV Streaming |
Enable/disable streaming for large CSV files |
String-LE: Open Settings |
Open String-LE settings |
String-LE: Help & Troubleshooting |
Built-in documentation |
| Setting | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|
string-le.openResultsSideBySide |
true |
Open results beside the current editor |
string-le.postProcess.openInNewFile |
true |
Post-process commands write to a new file instead of editing in place |
string-le.copyToClipboardEnabled |
false |
Also copy results to the clipboard (disabled for CSV output) |
string-le.dedupeEnabled |
false |
Deduplicate results automatically after extraction |
string-le.sortEnabled |
false |
Sort results automatically after extraction |
string-le.sortMode |
off |
alpha-asc, alpha-desc, length-asc, length-desc |
string-le.csv.streamingEnabled |
false |
Stream CSV results into the editor incrementally |
string-le.showParseErrors |
false |
Show parse errors as notifications |
string-le.notificationsLevel |
silent |
all = every notification, important = warnings + errors, silent = errors only |
string-le.safety.enabled |
true |
Guardrails for very large files/outputs |
string-le.safety.fileSizeWarnBytes |
1000000 |
Warn before extracting above this file size |
string-le.safety.largeOutputLinesThreshold |
50000 |
Offer Open/Copy/Cancel above this result count |
string-le.safety.manyDocumentsThreshold |
8 |
Confirm before opening this many result documents (CSV multi-column) |
string-le.statusBar.enabled |
true |
Show the status bar item |
string-le.telemetryEnabled |
false |
Local-only event log (see Privacy) |
Twelve languages besides English:
German · Spanish · French · Indonesian · Italian · Japanese · Korean · Portuguese (Brazil) · Russian · Ukrainian · Vietnamese · Chinese (Simplified)
Both halves are covered — the manifest (command titles, setting names and descriptions) and everything shown while the extension runs (notifications, the status bar, quick-picks and prompts). The extension follows VS Code's display language, so it matches whatever the editor is already set to; no setting of its own.
- No network access. The extension never sends data anywhere. The
telemetryEnabledsetting only writes events to a local Output Channel you can inspect (String-LE). - The MCP server holds the same line. It takes content as an argument and returns data: no filesystem access, no network calls, no telemetry. Your agent already has file-read tools, so duplicating them inside the server would add a path-traversal surface for no capability.
check:mcp-bundlefails the build if the server ever imports something that could reach either. - Error notifications redact home directories and credential-shaped fragments.
| What | Where |
|---|---|
| What the tool is allowed to say — scope, output contract, refusals, non-goals | crate/SPEC.md |
| How the extension is built and held together — architecture, invariants, toolchain, release | AGENTS.md |
| How the CLI is built and held together | crate/AGENTS.md |
| What changed | CHANGELOG.md · crate/CHANGELOG.md |
| The tool's page, and the other fifteen | letools.dev/tools/string-le |
| Input | Size | Found | Time | Rate | Scan speed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| JSON locale file | 1.77 MB | 40,000 | 9.53 ms | 4,198,116/sec | 185.9 MB/s |
| YAML locale file | 1.01 MB | 30,000 | 13.33 ms | 2,250,169/sec | 75.7 MB/s |
| CSV strings | 1.35 MB | 80,002 | 28.29 ms | 2,827,438/sec | 47.8 MB/s |
Median of 7 runs after warmup, on Apple M5 Pro, 24 GB RAM, Node 24.3.0. Inputs are generated
by scripts/benchmark.ts rather than checked in, so the sizes above are
exactly what was measured. Reproduce with bun run benchmark.
These are machine-specific and are not asserted in CI — a benchmark that gates a build only tells you how busy the runner was.
| Metric | Coverage |
|---|---|
| Statements | 90.84% |
| Branches | 83.48% |
| Functions | 97.24% |
| Lines | 92.26% |
306 test cases across 24 files, plus an integration suite that runs
in a real VS Code extension host and an end-to-end test that installs the
built .vsix into a clean profile.
Generated from a real run — coverage/coverage-summary.json and
coverage/test-results.json — by scripts/coverage-readme.js; CI fails if
this section drifts. Reproduce with bun run test:coverage, and the case
count is the one vitest prints.
Sixteen single-purpose tools for the work in front of every model. Each ships a Rust CLI and an MCP server. One page: letools.dev
Get it out
- String-LE — Extract every string in a codebase, with its position, so a person can read them
- Numbers-LE — Extract every hardcoded number in a codebase, so a person can check them
- Units-LE — Extract every quantity with its unit, normalized, and refuse the ambiguous ones by name
- Dates-LE — Extract every date and timestamp, and the exact instant each one resolves to
- IDs-LE — Extract every UUID, ULID, NanoID, ObjectId and Snowflake, and decode the time inside
- IPs-LE — Extract every IP address, CIDR block and MAC, normalized and classified by scope
- URLs-LE — Extract every URL in a codebase, with its protocol and exact position
- Paths-LE — Extract every file path in a codebase, and say whether it still points at anything
- Colors-LE — Extract every color in a codebase, and say which ones are not in your palette
Check it
- Regex-LE — Find every regex in a codebase, and report which can be driven into catastrophic backtracking
- Versions-LE — Find where one dependency is constrained differently across a repository's manifests
- i18n-LE — Identify the i18n library a project uses, then audit its catalogs by that library's rules
- Scrape-LE — Check whether a page is scrapeable before the scraper is written, and say when it cannot tell
Guard it
- Secrets-LE — Find hardcoded credentials in a codebase, and never print one into the report
- EnvSync-LE — Compare the dotenv files in a tree, and say which keys are missing from which
- Unicode-LE — Find the Unicode that hides meaning — bidi controls, invisibles, homoglyphs, mixed scripts
Each stands on its own: no shared crate, no published core. Where two of them agree, it is because the same answer was right twice.
Contact — nolindnaidoo.com · GitHub · LinkedIn
Rust — pixelcoords and pixelactions are one loop: pixelcoords answers where, pixelactions acts there. Their own tools, their own voice — not part of the LE family.
- pixelcoords — Freeze your screen, mark regions, get pixel-exact coordinates and crops pixelcoords.dev · crates.io · docs.rs
- pixelactions — Consume human-verified coordinates, perform the interaction, confirm it landed pixelactions.dev · crates.io · docs.rs
MIT © nolindnaidoo