How to grep search committed code in the Git history

Question

I have deleted a file or some code in a file sometime in the past  Can I grep in the content  not in the commit messages    A very poor solution is to grep the log   git log -p   grep  lt pattern gt    However  this doesn t return the commit hash straight away  I played around with git grep to no avail

User · Answer

Okay  twice just today I ve seen people wanting a closer equivalent for hg grep  which is like git log -pS but confines its output to just the  annotated  changed lines  Which I suppose would be handier than  pattern  in the pager if you re after a quick overview  So here s a diff-hunk scanner that takes git log --pretty  h -p output and spits annotated change lines  Put it in diffmarkup l  say e g  make   bin diffmarkup  and use it like git log --pretty  h -pS pattern   diffmarkup   grep pattern    option main 8bit nodefault            vim  tw 0  top           define  GNU SOURCE 1    x commitheader  x diffheader  x hunk            char  afile 0   bfile 0   commit 0          int aline aremain bline bremain          int iline 1    lt hunk gt  n          iline  if   aremain bremain   0  BEGIN diffheader   lt   gt  n     iline    lt INITIAL commitheader diffheader gt  diff          BEGIN diffheader   lt INITIAL gt        BEGIN commitheader  if commit free commit   commit strdup yytext    lt commitheader gt      lt diffheader gt   deleted new index  quot   quot          lt diffheader gt   quot --- quot               if  afile free afile   afile strdup strchrnul yytext         lt diffheader gt   quot     quot               if  bfile free bfile   bfile strdup strchrnul yytext         lt diffheader hunk gt   quot     quot                    BEGIN hunk  char  next yytext 3           define checkread format number    int span  if    sscanf next format quot  n quot   amp number  amp span    goto lostinhunkheader  next  span            checkread  quot  - d quot  aline   if    next          checkread  quot   d quot  aremain  else aremain 1          checkread  quot    d quot  bline   if    next          checkread  quot   d quot  bremain  else bremain 1          break          lostinhunkheader  fprintf stderr  quot Lost at line  d  can t parse hunk header   s   n quot  iline yytext   exit 1              lt diffheader gt   yyless 0   BEGIN INITIAL    lt hunk gt   quot   quot       printf  quot  s  s  d  c  s n quot  commit bfile 1 bline    yytext yytext 1   --bremain   lt hunk gt   quot - quot       printf  quot  s  s  d  c  s n quot  commit afile 1 aline    yytext yytext 1   --aremain   lt hunk gt   quot   quot         aline    bline  --aremain  --bremain   lt hunk gt   fprintf stderr  quot Lost at line  d  Can t parse hunk  n quot  iline   exit 1

User · Answer

For simplicity  I d suggest using GUI  gitk - The Git repository browser  It s pretty flexible   To search code     To search files     Of course  it also supports regular expressions       And you can navigate through the results using the up down arrows

User · Answer

Jeet s answer works in PowerShell   git grep -n  lt regex gt    git rev-list --all    The following displays all files  in any commit  that contain a password     Store intermediate result  result   git grep -n  password    git rev-list --all     Display unique file names  result   select -unique      -replace

User · Answer

git log can be a more effective way of searching for text across all branches  especially if there are many matches  and you want to see more recent  relevant  changes first   git log -p --all -S  search string  git log -p --all -G  match regular expression    These log commands list commits that add or remove the given search string regex   generally  more recent first  The -p option causes the relevant diff to be shown where the pattern was added or removed  so you can see it in context   Having found a relevant commit that adds the text you were looking for  for example  8beeff00d   find the branches that contain the commit   git branch -a --contains 8beeff00d

User · Answer

So are you trying to grep through older versions of the code looking to see where something last exists   If I were doing this  I would probably use git bisect   Using bisect  you can specify a known good version  a known bad version  and a simple script that does a check to see if the version is good or bad  in this case a grep to see if the code you are looking for is present    Running this will find when the code was removed

User · Answer

You should use the pickaxe  -S  option of git log   To search for Foo   git log -SFoo -- path containing change git log -SFoo --since 2009 1 1 --until 2010 1 1 -- path containing change   See Git history - find lost line by keyword for more     As Jakub Narebski commented    this looks for differences that introduce or remove an instance of  lt string gt   It usually means  revisions where you added or removed line with  Foo    the --pickaxe-regex option allows you to use extended POSIX regex instead of searching for a string  Example  from git log   git log -S frotz  nitfol  --pickaxe-regex     As Rob commented  this search is case-sensitive - he opened a follow-up question on how to search case-insensitive

User · Answer

My favorite way to do it is with git log s -G option  added in version 1 7 4    -G lt regex gt         Look for differences whose added or removed line matches the given  lt regex gt     There is a subtle difference between the way the -G and -S options determine if a commit matches    The -S option essentially counts the number of times your search matches in a file before and after a commit  The commit is shown in the log if the before and after counts are different  This will not  for example  show commits where a line matching your search was moved  With the -G option  the commit is shown in the log if your search matches any line that was added  removed  or changed    Take this commit as an example   diff --git a test b test index dddc242  60a8ba6 100644 --- a test     b test    -1  1    -hello hello  hello goodbye hello   Because the number of times  hello  appears in the file is the same before and after this commit  it will not match using -Shello  However  since there was a change to a line matching hello  the commit will be shown using -Ghello

User · Answer

Search in any revision  any file  unix linux   git rev-list --all   xargs git grep  lt regexp gt   Search only in some given files  for example XML files  git rev-list --all   xargs -I   git grep  lt regexp gt     --  quot   xml quot   The result lines should look like this  6988bec26b1503d45eb0b2e8a4364afb87dde7af bla xml  text of the line it found    You can then get more information like author  date  and diff using git show  git show 6988bec26b1503d45eb0b2e8a4364afb87dde7af

User · Answer

To search for commit content  i e   actual lines of source  as opposed to commit messages and the like   you need to do   git grep  lt regexp gt    git rev-list --all    git rev-list --all   xargs git grep  lt expression gt  will work if you run into an  Argument list too long  error   If you want to limit the search to some subtree  for instance   lib util    you will need to pass that to the rev-list subcommand and grep as well   git grep  lt regexp gt    git rev-list --all -- lib util  -- lib util   This will grep through all your commit text for regexp   The reason for passing the path in both commands is because rev-list will return the revisions list where all the changes to lib util happened  but also you need to pass to grep so that it will only search in lib util   Just imagine the following scenario  grep might find the same  lt regexp gt  on other files which are contained in the same revision returned by rev-list  even if there was no change to that file on that revision    Here are some other useful ways of searching your source   Search working tree for text matching regular expression regexp   git grep  lt regexp gt    Search working tree for lines of text matching regular expression regexp1 or regexp2   git grep -e  lt regexp1 gt   --or  -e  lt regexp2 gt    Search working tree for lines of text matching regular expression regexp1 and regexp2  reporting file paths only   git grep -l -e  lt regexp1 gt  --and -e  lt regexp2 gt    Search working tree for files that have lines of text matching regular expression regexp1 and lines of text matching regular expression regexp2   git grep -l --all-match -e  lt regexp1 gt  -e  lt regexp2 gt    Search working tree for changed lines of text matching pattern   git diff --unified 0   grep  lt pattern gt    Search all revisions for text matching regular expression regexp   git grep  lt regexp gt    git rev-list --all    Search all revisions between rev1 and rev2 for text matching regular expression regexp   git grep  lt regexp gt    git rev-list  lt rev1 gt    lt rev2 gt

User · Answer

Adding more to the answers already present  If you know the file in which you might have made do this  git log --follow -p -S  search-string   lt file-path gt   --follow  lists the history of a file

User · Answer

For anyone else trying to do this in Sourcetree  there is no direct command in the UI for it  as of version 1 6 21 0   However  you can use the commands specified in the accepted answer by opening Terminal window  button available in the main toolbar  and copy pasting them therein   Note  Sourcetree s Search view can partially do text searching for you  Press Ctrl   3 to go to Search view  or click Search tab available at the bottom   From far right  set Search type to File Changes and then type the string you want to search  This method has the following limitations compared to the above command    Sourcetree only shows the commits that contain the search word in one of the changed files  Finding the exact file that contains the search text is again a manual task  RegEx is not supported

User · Answer

Scenario  You did a big clean up of your code by using your IDE  Problem  The IDE cleaned up more than it should and now you code does not compile  missing resources  etc    Solution   git grep --cached  text to find    It will find the file where  text to find  was changed   You can now undo this change and compile your code

User · Answer

git rev-list --all   xargs -n 5 git grep EXPRESSION   is a tweak to Jeet s solution  so it shows results while it searches and not just at the end  which can take a long time in a large repository

User · Answer

If you want to browse code changes  see what actually has been changed with the given word in the whole history  go for patch mode - I found a very useful combination of doing   git log -p   Hit     for search mode    Type in the word you are searching    If the first search is not relevant  hit  n  for next  like in Vim

User · Answer

I took Jeet s answer and adapted it to Windows  thanks to this answer    FOR  F  x IN    git rev-list --all    DO  git grep  lt regex gt   x  gt  out txt   Note that for me  for some reason  the actual commit that deleted this regex did not appear in the output of the command  but rather one commit prior to it

User · Answer

Whenever I find myself at your place  I use the following command line   git log -S   lt words phrases i am trying to find gt   --all --oneline  --graph   Explanation    git log - Need I write more here  it shows the logs in chronological order  -S   lt words phrases i am trying to find gt   - It shows all those Git commits where any file  added modified deleted  has the words phrases I am trying to find without   lt    symbols  --all - To enforce and search across all the branches  --oneline - It compresses the Git log in one line  --graph - It creates the graph of chronologically ordered commits

[git] How to grep (search) committed code in the Git history

Examples related to git

Examples related to grep

Examples related to diff