This command will show you the commit history of all the lines that contain the keyword in the specified file in the specified range of commits. Replace with the name of the file you want to search in. Replace with the hash of the ending commit in the range you want to search in. Git log -all-match -grep=frotz -author=Linus This will show commits that mention frotz and written by Linus.Replace with the hash of the starting commit in the range you want to search in. It allows you to use this mechanism like so: The way 'git log' family uses the grep mechanism is exactly for this 'does the whole thing has a match?' aspect, not 'show me the lines that match these criteria' aspect. The matches do not have to be on the same line they can be anywhere in the same file. Git grep -l -all-match -e frotz -e nitfol will give the names of the files that have both frotz and nitfol somewhere in them. 'git grep' allows you to say 'I am looking for this or that patterns, but please consider a file successfully matches with them only if you found matches with all of the patterns', with the -all-match option (the regular 'grep' does not let you do this). The exit status of the command is zero (success) if there is a match, and the -l option shows the names of the files that have matches, but it does not actually show the lines that matched. There is an aspect of 'grep' that cares only about the existence of matches with the pattern in a file (this is true not just with 'git grep' but also is true with the regular 'grep'). The above is not what you want to use for that purpose. Git grep -l -e frotz -and -e nitfol But often you would want to see a file that has both frotz and nitfol, not necessarily on the same line but anywhere in the same file.

We learned that this finds files with a line that has both frotz and nitfol: I did not explain 'git grep -all-match' in the earlier entry, but it is exactly what we want to use here, so we digress a bit. Git log -grep=frotz -and -grep=nitfol will not find a commit if its log message has a line break in the sentence 'This commit fixes the frotz feature and adds support for the nitfol feature' somewhere between the two words you are looking for.ĭoes that mean the 'grep' feature in 'git log' family can practically only find one item at a time and not very useful? For example, even if we had -and option to 'git log' family, this command line: The and semantics is not very useful in the context of 'git log' command, and this is true even if we limit the discussion to the message part. That is partly the reason why 'git log' family does not support -and option to begin with. 'git grep -e frotz -and -e nitfol' looks for lines that have both frotz and nitfol, but obviously the line that records Linus's name does not have the word frotz the above will never match. Git log -grep=frotz -and -author=Linus One is simply because 'git log' family does not support the -and option.īut a more fundamental reason why this does not work is because 'grep' is line oriented. The following attempt to overcome this does not work as you expect, for two reasons:

Git log -grep=frotz -author=Linusto find changes written by Linus or mentioned frotz (the use of or semantics here often feels unintuitive and less useful, but we will come to that shortly). Two options, '-author= name' and '-committer= name' are also supported internally with the same 'grep' mechanism. As with the usual 'git grep', giving more than one patterns means ' this or that'.

This finds the commits that happened within the last month and mentioned either frotz or nitfol in their commit log messages. Git log -grep=frotz -grep=nitfol -since=1.month Earlier I showed a somewhat advanced feature of 'git grep' command, and hinted that a limited subset of the feature is available also in 'git log' to look for commits that have specified strings in their commit log messages.

Git log grep commit