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search_files can substitute the wrong line when matched text contains :number:

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Assessment

Difficulty
2/5
Estimated time
1-3 hours
Newbie friendliness
75/100
Issue type
Bug
Clarity
Clearly specified
Activity status
Active
Tech stack
typescript
Domain
devtools, testing-qa

Research direction

Look at the search_files function and its regex parsing of grep output. The issue is in the adapter that misinterprets :number: sequences within the matched text. Start by finding where the grep results are processed and identify the regex pattern. Test with the provided example file to see the substitution error. Verify the fix by ensuring the correct line number and text are preserved.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

What happened?

search_files can return the wrong source text when a matched line itself contains another :<number>: sequence.

For example, if line 1 is:

src/example.ts:42: build failed

the native grep tool correctly returns:

many.log:1: src/example.ts:42: build failed

but the Step-facing search_files result can become:

many.log:1: src/example.ts:42: UNRELATED_LINE_42

The adapter reparses rendered grep output with a greedy path:line:text regex, mistakes the later :42: for the real line number, then reloads line 42 from the file. Timestamp-shaped text such as 12:34: reproduces the same problem; if the false line number is past EOF, the visible result can become (no matches) while the details still report one match.

I reproduced this on clean main @ f113768 with the built-in tool profile and project-native Vitest, without external extensions.

Steps to reproduce
  1. Create a 42-line file where line 1 is src/example.ts:42: build failed and line 42 is UNRELATED_LINE_42.
  2. Run search_files for build failed on that file.
  3. The native grep result contains the correct line-1 text.
  4. The Step-facing result substitutes the contents of line 42.
Expected behavior

search_files should preserve the native match path, line number, and matched text without reinterpreting delimiter-like text inside the match.

Version

main @ f113768 / @step-harness/coding-agent 0.84.4

Dominant language
TypeScript
Stars
54
Forks
20
Avg merge
4h 1m
Merged PRs (30d)
12

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