Search Git Commits Using Regex

Question

I have a Git repository that contains hundreds of commits and several branches. How to search a particular commit that contains a certain string e.g. "helper function"? Ideally, the string can be denoted by a regex.

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2928584/how-to-grep-in-the-git-history — Peter O'Callaghan, Jan 28 '12 at 13:07

knittl · Answer 1 · 2023-05-04T06:08:19.690

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Newer versions of Git support git log -G<regex>:

git log -G'helper.*function' --full-history --all

This command will search for the regex in the diff of each commit, and only display commits which introduced a change that matches the regex.

edited May 04 '23 at 06:08

answered Jan 28 '12 at 13:22

knittl

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This was the answer I was looking for, and how I understood the question was written. – Eosis Apr 07 '20 at 09:48

score 33 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 11:45

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Credits go to this answer:

git log --all --grep='Build 0051'

# case insensitive
git log --all --grep='Build 0051' -i

edited May 23 '17 at 11:45

Community

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answered Feb 27 '13 at 19:18

moey

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This looks for the regex in the commit message as opposed to knittl's answer, where -G searches through the commit's diff. – staafl Jan 16 '18 at 20:09

Search Git Commits Using Regex

2 Answers2