Case-insensitive git pickaxe search

Question

I'm trying to find all commits where a particular string or arbitrary capitalisation thereof (e.g. foobar ,FooBar, fooBar) was introduced/removed in a git repository.

Based on this SO answer (which covers a different basic use case), I first tried using git grep

git rev-list --all | xargs git grep -i foobar

This was pretty awful, as it only gave information as to whether the string is present in a commit, so I ended up with loads of superfluous commits.

I then tried pickaxe, which got me most of the way there, e.g.

git log --pickaxe-regex -S'foobar' --oneline

This only got the lowercase foobar. I tried the -i flag, but that doesn't seem to apply to the --pickaxe-regex option. I then resorted to using patterns like this, which got me a bit further:

git log --pickaxe-regex -S'.oo.ar' --oneline

Is there a way to make --pickaxe-regex do case-insensitive matching?

I'm using git v1.7.12.4.

Fivefinger

Just to be sure, try without the single quotes, and try with a more recent Git (preferably 2.0+). But keep in mind -i won't work with '.oo.ar' (regexp) before Git 2.0. – Acronym

Answer 1

The way the -i is used with pickaxe (see commit accccde, git 1.7.10, April 2012) is:

git log -S foobar -i --oneline

or

git log --regexp-ignore-case -Sfoobar

or

git log -i -Sfoobar

Note that with 1.x git versions this option will not work with a regexps, only with a fixed string. It works with regexps only since git 2.0 and commit 218c45a, git 2.0, May 2014.

Acronym

I'm probably still missing something here. I tried searching for a plain string using --pickaxe-regex, i.e. 'git log --pickaxe-regex -S foobar -i --online', and got 0 results. 'git log -i -S foobar --oneline' got me several hits. – Fivefinger

@Fivefinger you said options 2 and 3 were working. That would be -Sfoobar, not -S foobar. (no need for --pickaxe-regex if you are using the -S: I'll fix the answer) – Acronym