git-search by git grep

Git provide utils to search through the code and commit messages.

use git grep to search in source file

Git grep looks through the files in working directory.

git grep stash
# ignore case
git grep -i StaSH
# quote ' is optional, but needed for special chars
git grep '`master`'
git grep 'stash\s'

# -n (--line-number): show line number
# -p (--show-function): show function or section header
# --break and --heading provide better search result formatting
git grep -n -p --break --heading stash

# -c (--count): count number of matches for each file
git grep -c merge

git grep can search across all branches.

# grep on revision list with --all: all the refs
git grep "string/regexp" $(git rev-list --all)

# same result with xargs command
# also sometimes useful to pipe result to a text file
git rev-list --all | xargs git grep "string/regexp" >> found.txt

But be careful with rev-list --all for large repo since it may take a very long time to scan.