[Bug] Grep tool returns incomplete results
Resolved 💬 4 comments Opened Nov 28, 2025 by chubert-ch Closed Jan 2, 2026
Bug Description
Either Claude is misunderstanding the output of its "grep" tool or that tool is malfunctioning. See:
● Significant difference! The bash grep -r found 6 matches while the Grep tool only found 3 matches.
Matches ONLY found by bash grep (missing from Grep tool):
1. AbstractPDF2XHTML.java:239 - extractXMPAsEmbeddedFile(is, XMP_PAGE_LOCATION_PREFIX + pageNumber)
2. AbstractPDF2XHTML.java:273 - private void extractXMPAsEmbeddedFile(InputStream is, String location) (method declaration)
3. AbstractPDF2XHTML.java:804 - extractXMPXFA(pdf, metadata, context) (method call)
Matches found by both:
1. AbstractPDF2XHTML.java:212 - extractXMPXFA method declaration
2. AbstractPDF2XHTML.java:229 - extractXMPAsEmbeddedFile call
3. PDMetadataExtractor.java:88 - extractXMPMM call
The Grep tool missed 50% of the matches (3 out of 6). This is a significant discrepancy - the tool is not returning all results even though they're well under
the 20-result limit. This appears to be a bug in the Grep tool implementation.
The command run:
[
{
"type":
"tool_use",
"id":
"toolu_012wFx4WxUckuxm1x4BQg4GQ",
"name":
"Grep",
"input": {
"pattern": "extractXMP",
"path":
"/home/chubert/myProjects/apache-tika/tika-parsers/tika-parsers-standard/tika-parsers-standard-modules/tika-parser-pdf-module/src/main/java/org/apache/tika/parser/
pdf",
"output_mode": "content",
"-n":
true,
"-B": 2,
"-A": 2
}
}
]
It was run here: https://github.com/apache/tika/tree/main/tika-parsers/tika-parsers-standard/tika-parsers-standard-modules/tika-parser-pdf-module
Environment Info
- Platform: linux
- Terminal: gnome-terminal
- Version: 2.0.55
- Feedback ID: 7ebf2dd1-bfc3-481d-bb5d-9ad8948b1816
Errors
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