Code

TODO and FIXME Comment Extractor

Lists every tagged comment with its line number, searching comments only.

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How to use this tool

  1. Paste the file you want the notes pulled out of.
  2. Edit the tag list if your team uses different words.
  3. Select Extract.
  4. Deal with the FIXME, BUG and XXX entries first — those are the ones flagged as something being wrong rather than unfinished.

What todo extractor does

Tagged comments are the notes a codebase leaves for itself, and they go unread because nothing collects them. This pulls out every TODO, FIXME, HACK, XXX, BUG, NOTE and REVIEW with the line it sits on, and marks the three that usually mean something is actually wrong rather than merely unfinished.

The search runs over comments only. A grep for TODO finds every occurrence in a string literal, a test fixture and a documentation example as well, and the noise is why people stop running it. You can change the tag list to match whatever convention your team uses.

Frequently asked questions

A search finds every occurrence, including the ones in string literals, test fixtures and documentation examples, and that noise is why people stop running it. This searches comments only, so what comes back is the list of actual notes.

Yes. The tag list is an option — replace it with whatever your team uses. Matching is case insensitive and whole-word, so a tag will not match the middle of a longer word.

Because by convention they mean something is wrong now, while TODO and NOTE mean something is unfinished or worth knowing. They are counted separately in the summary so a file with three FIXMEs does not look the same as one with three NOTEs.