Filtering

towl supports filtering scan results by TODO type using the -t / --todo-type flag.

Filter by Type

towl scan -t todo      # Only TODO comments
towl scan -t fixme     # Only FIXME comments
towl scan -t hack      # Only HACK comments
towl scan -t note      # Only NOTE comments
towl scan -t bug       # Only BUG comments

The filter value is case-insensitive -- TODO, todo, and Todo all work.

Available Types

towl recognises five built-in TODO types:

Each type is matched via the corresponding regex pattern in the todo_patterns configuration. The default patterns are case-insensitive ((?i)).

Combining with Output Formats

Filtering works with any output format:

# FIXMEs as JSON
towl scan -t fixme -f json -o fixmes.json

# BUGs as Markdown
towl scan -t bug -f markdown -o bugs.md

# NOTEs in terminal table
towl scan -t note

Without Filtering

When no -t flag is provided, all recognised types are included in the output. The results are grouped by type in all formats.

Custom Patterns

You can add custom TODO patterns in .towl.toml. Each pattern must contain a capture group (.*) for extracting the description:

[parsing]
todo_patterns = [
    "(?i)\\bTODO:\\s*(.*)",
    "(?i)\\bFIXME:\\s*(.*)",
    "(?i)\\bHACK:\\s*(.*)",
    "(?i)\\bNOTE:\\s*(.*)",
    "(?i)\\bBUG:\\s*(.*)",
    "(?i)\\bXXX:\\s*(.*)",
]

Note: Custom patterns extend the set of matched comments but do not add new filter types to -t. The built-in five types are always available for filtering.