How to search the git log

To search through your Git commit history, you can utilize several commands that allow filtering based on commit messages or changes introduced in the commits.

The git log command displays the commit history of the current branch. By adding the --grep option, you can filter this log to show only those commits whose commit message contains a certain string or matches a regex pattern.

This guide explains how to use git log --grep effectively, including searching commit messages, the entire project history, and across all branches.

Using git log --grep to filter commit messages

1. Basic string search: To find commits with a specific string in their commit message, you can use:

   Terminal

   git log --grep="Fix bug"
   
   

   This command displays all commits where the commit message contains "Fix bug".

2. Regular expression search: If you're looking for commits with messages that match a more complex pattern, you can use regular expressions (regex):

   Terminal

   git log --grep="JIRA-[0-9]+"
   
   

   This regex pattern matches commit messages that refer to a JIRA ticket, such as "JIRA-1234".

   For combining patterns that should match any of the specified conditions (OR logic), you can use regular expressions within a single --grep option:

   Terminal

   git log --grep="\(UI\|bug\)"
   
   

   This uses the regular expression \(UI\|bug\) to find commits whose messages contain either "UI" or "bug".

Advanced search techniques

1. Case-insensitive search: Add the -i option to perform a case-insensitive search:

   Terminal

   git log --grep="fix bug" -i
   
   

2. Combining multiple --grep conditions If you need to find commits that must meet multiple criteria (AND logic), you can specify multiple --grep options. This will work because git log implicitly uses AND logic when multiple --grep flags are used:

   Terminal

   git log --grep="UI" --grep="bug"
   
   

   This command will return commits that contain both "UI" and "bug" in their messages, as git log treats multiple --grep conditions as needing to all be true.

3. Searching across all branches: To extend the search across all branches, include the --all flag:

   Terminal

   git log --all --grep="UI update"
   
   

4. Searching for strings in files: If you want to search the history for a specific string within the files (not just the commit messages), use git grep in combination with git log:

   Terminal

   git grep "functionName" $(git rev-list --all)
   
   

   This command searches for "functionName" in all files across the entire history of the repository.

For further reading on searching the log with grep see the official Git documentation.