How to grep Git commit diffs or contents for a certain word

Question

In a Git code repository I want to list all commits that contain a certain word  I tried this  git log -p   grep --context 4  word    but it does not necessarily give me back the filename  unless it s less that 5 lines away from the word I searched for  I also tried  git grep  word    but it gives me only present files and not the history   How do I search the entire history so I can follow changes on a particular word  I intend to search my codebase for occurrences of word to track down changes  search in files history

User · Accepted Answer

If you want to find all commits where commit message contains given word  use    git log --grep word   If you want to find all commits where  word  was added or removed in the file contents  to be more exact  where number of occurences of  word  changed   i e  search the commit contents  use so called  pickaxe  search with    git log -Sword   In modern git there is also    git log -Gword   to look for differences whose added or removed line matches  word   also commit contents    Note that -G by default accepts a regex  while -S accepts a string  but can be modified to accept regexes using the --pickaxe-regex      To illustrate the difference between -S lt regex gt  --pickaxe-regex and -G lt regex gt   consider a commit with the following diff in the same file        return  regexec regexp  two- gt ptr  1   amp regmatch  0       -    hit    regexec regexp  mf2 ptr  1   amp regmatch  0         While git log -G regexec  regexp  will show this commit  git log -S regexec  regexp  --pickaxe-regex will not  because the number of occurrences of that string did not change       With Git 2 25 1  Feb  2020   the documentation is clarified around those regexes   See commit 9299f84  06 Feb 2020  by Martin   gren        Merged by Junio C Hamano -- gitster -- in commit 0d11410  12 Feb 2020        diff-options txt  avoid  regex  overload in example      Reported-by  Adam Dinwoodie   Signed-off-by  Martin   gren   Reviewed-by  Taylor Blau      When we exemplify the difference between -G and -S  using --pickaxe-regex   we do so using an example diff and git diff invocation involving  regexec    regexp    regmatch            The example is correct  but we can make it easier to untangle by avoiding writing  regex    unless it s really needed to make our point       Use some made-up  non-regexy words instead    The git diff documentation now includes      To illustrate the difference between -S lt regex gt  --pickaxe-regex and   -G lt regex gt   consider a commit with the following diff in the same   file        return frotz nitfol  two- gt ptr  1  0       -    hit   frotz nitfol  mf2 ptr  1  0         While git log -G frotz  nitfol  will show this commit  git log   -S frotz  nitfol  --pickaxe-regex will not  because the number of   occurrences of that string did not change

User · Answer

If you want search for sensitive data in order to remove it from your git history  which is the reason why I landed here   there are tools for that  Github as a dedicated help page for that issue    Here is the gist of the article       The BFG Repo-Cleaner is a faster  simpler alternative to git filter-branch for removing unwanted data  For example  to remove your file with sensitive data and leave your latest commit untouched   run    bfg --delete-files YOUR-FILE-WITH-SENSITIVE-DATA      To replace all text listed in passwords txt wherever it can be found in your repository s history  run    bfg --replace-text passwords txt      See the BFG Repo-Cleaner s documentation for full usage and download instructions

User · Answer

vim-fugitive is versatile for that kind of examining in Vim    Use  Ggrep to do that  For more information you can install vim-fugitive and look up the turorial by  help Grep  And this episode  exploring-the-history-of-a-git-repository will guide you to do all that

User · Answer

You can try the following command   git log --patch --color always   less   searching string   or using grep in the following way   git rev-list --all   GIT PAGER cat xargs git grep  search string    Run this command in the parent directory where you would like to search

User · Answer

After a lot of experimentation  I can recommend the following  which shows commits that introduce or remove lines containing a given regexp  and displays the text changes in each  with colours showing words added and removed    git log --pickaxe-regex -p --color-words -S   lt regexp to search for gt     Takes a while to run though     -

User · Answer

To use boolean connector on regular expression   git log --grep   0-9     a-z      This regular expression search for regular expression  0-9   or  a-z   on commit messages

User · Answer

git log s pickaxe will find commits with changes including  word  with git log -Sword

User · Answer

One more way syntax to do it is  git log -S  word  Like this you can search for example git log -S  with whitespaces and stuff

[git] How to grep Git commit diffs or contents for a certain word?

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[git] How to grep Git commit diffs or contents for a certain word?

diff-options.txt: avoid "regex" overload in example

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