Search code inside a Github project

Question

Is there a way to grep for something inside a Github project's code?

I could pull the source and grep it locally, but I was wondering if it's possible through the web interface or a 3rd-party alternative.

Ideas?

Antares

also checkout code.ohloh.net :) – Kramlich

For Java/Scala repos, try Codota Semantic Code Search – Kapok

Opened a feature request at: github.com/isaacs/github/issues/1495 – Incite

Answer 1

Update May 2023:

The new code search and code view is now generally available (May. 2023)

(As noted by holydragon in the comments, that does require to sign in to GitHub first)

At GitHub Universe last year, we announced a total redesign of GitHub's code search and navigation experience, powered by our all-new code search engine that we built from scratch.
And in February, we announced our public beta.

Today, we are rolling out this feature to all GitHub users.

Check out our blog post to learn more about how GitHub's new code search and code view can help you search, navigate, and understand your code.
And if you have feedback, please share it with us in our feedback discussion.

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Update Dec. 2021: search has been improved again, with Search for an exact string, with support for substring matches and special characters, or regexps.

But only on cs.github.com, and still in beta (waitlist applies)

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Update January 2013: a brand new search has arrived!, based on elasticsearch.org:

A search for stat within the ruby repo will be expressed as stat repo:ruby/ruby, and will now just work^TM.
(the repo name is not case sensitive: test repo:wordpress/wordpress returns the same as test repo:Wordpress/Wordpress)

Will give:

And you have many other examples of search, based on followers, or on forks, or...

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Update July 2012 (old days of Lucene search and poor code indexing, combined with broken GUI, kept here for archive):

The search (based on SolrQuerySyntax) is now more permissive and the dreaded "Invalid search query. Try quoting it." is gone when using the default search selector "Everything":)

(I suppose we can all than Tim Pease, which had in one of his objectives "hacking on improved search experiences for all GitHub properties", and I did mention this Stack Overflow question at the time ;) )

Here is an illustration of a grep within the ruby code: it will looks for repos and users, but also for what I wanted to search in the first place: the code!

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Initial answer and illustration of the former issue (Sept. 2012 => March 2012)

You can use the advanced search GitHub form:

• Choose Code, Repositories or Users from the drop-down and
• use the corresponding prefixes listed for that search type.

For instance, Use the repo:username/repo-name directive to limit the search to a code repository.
The initial "Advanced Search" page includes the section:

Code Search:

The Code search will look through all of the code publicly hosted on GitHub. You can also filter by :

• the language language:
• the repository name (including the username) repo:
• the file path path:

So if you select the "Code" search selector, then your query grepping for a text within a repo will work:

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What is incredibly unhelpful from GitHub is that:

• if you forget to put the right search selector (here "Code"), you will get an error message:
  "Invalid search query. Try quoting it."

• the error message doesn't help you at all.
  No amount of "quoting it" will get you out of this error.

• once you get that error message, you don't get the sections reminding you of the right association between the search selectors ("Repositories", "Users" or "Language") and the (right) search filters (here "repo:").
  Any further attempt you do won't display those associations (selectors-filters) back. Only the error message you see above...
  The only way to get back those arrays is by clicking the "Advance Search" icon:

• the "Everything" search selector, which is the default, is actually the wrong one for all of the search filters! Except "language:"...
  (You could imagine/assume that "Everything" would help you to pick whatever search selector actually works with the search filter "repo:", but nope. That would be too easy)

• you cannot specify the search selector you want through the "Advance Search" field alone!
  (but you can for "language:", even though "Search Language" is another combo box just below the "Search for" 'type' one...)

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So, the user's experience usually is as follows:

• you click "Advanced Search", glance over those sections of filters, and notice one you want to use: "repo:"
• you make a first advanced search "repo:jruby/jruby stat", but with the default Search selector "Everything"
  => FAIL! (and the arrays displaying the association "Selectors-Filters" is gone)
• you notice that "Search for" selector thingy, select the first choice "Repositories" ("Dah! I want to search within repositories...")
  => FAIL!
• dejected, you select the next choice of selectors (here, "Users"), without even looking at said selector, just to give it one more try...
  => FAIL!
• "Screw this, GitHub search is broken! I'm outta here!"
  ...
  ^{(GitHub advanced search is actually not broken. Only their GUI is...)}

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So, to recap, if you want to "grep for something inside a Github project's code", as the OP Ben Humphreys, don't forget to select the "Code" search selector...

Pol

are you sure, i tried repo:"jruby/jruby" stat repo:"jruby" stat jruby: stat none of which works – Viv

@TomH: at first glance, it might be a bug on GitHub side, as commented at superuser.com/a/179900/141 – Pol

@TomH: after an helpful edit from "Community", I have added illustrations to my answer in order to show how the advanced search repo:jruby/jruby stat (no need for double-quotes here) can work. So it is not a bug, after all. – Pol

@Community: your edit was helpful, thank you! But it lacked a bit of some illustrations and analysis. I have edited the answer to include those. – Pol

How do I search the current, master branch only? I don't want to see multiple hits on the same file (as shown in the first screen shot) when all but one are obsolete. – Wheelwright

@MarkBerry good question. I don't see any specific filter at first glance. – Pol

I found I could fork the project, make the fork private, then search using the "Search source code" box that only appears on private repositories (see answer by @Patrick Linskey). That's a lot of work! – Wheelwright

Okay - this is great. What steps can we take to feed this information back to github so they fix it? – Notification

@DannyStaple Well, they seem to be aware of the issue, if you look at the mission described in github.com/blog/1116-tim-pease-is-a-githubber: "Tim will most likely be [...] hacking on improved search experiences for all GitHub properties". Make sure to reply to their GitHub tweet (twitter.com/#!/github/status/197070106768048128), like I did (twitter.com/#!/VonC_/status/197565733830541313) – Pol

FWIW I contacted GitHub because I have not been getting any search results when restricting searches to my repos. Tim Pease responded that they were having difficulty with the volume of repo indexes, so they've been migrating to sharded index servers. There's no ETA on when all repos will be migrated. – Dealings

@emddudley is there an github issue somewhere we can track for that? – Montherlant

I have just used the advice of this answer and it is working for me as well, but I have one caveat to add. The repo name should always be in lowercase even if GitHib lists it everywhere else in a different way. For example, (after setting the Code dropdown, etc, as above) try the same search with: repo:wordpress/wordpress vs repo:WordPress/WordPress ... only the first one will yield results. – Amargo

@Amargo and remember that for some new repos... you won't get any result at all: https://mcmap.net/q/13135/-a-public-github-repo-not-found-via-search – Pol

@Amargo I have update my answer, and your case-sensitive repo name issue is now gone. – Pol

@lajarre it would be interesting to post a new question (referencing back this one), with more details about what exactly isn't "actually working". – Pol

They changed the syntax apparently, it’s now @user:repo rather than repo:user/repo – Maples

Can you search partial words? repo:git/git path:/Documentation/RelNotes/1.7.2.txt 'orphan' is an exact match but repo:git/git path:/Documentation/RelNotes/1.7.2.txt 'orpha' fails :( – Yong

@Yong I agree, it doesn't seem to work. That would be a good question to ask to Github support, and then to Stack Overflow (where you can answer your own question), for all to benefit from. – Pol

Ok done, they said they'd make it a feature request but in the mean time just clone and grep yourself. Be nice if it came through. – Yong

@Yong incidentally, that is what I do: clone and grep, using https://mcmap.net/q/13136/-how-do-i-recursively-grep-all-directories-and-subdirectories and https://mcmap.net/q/12006/-how-to-grep-search-through-committed-code-in-the-git-history. – Pol

Does anyone else see this answer as a ginormous cry for help? There's got to be a better way than this pig-pile of features. – Ashburn

how to search in 2021? – Monogenesis

@Monogenesis In 2021, you would need to register to cs.github.com: see github.blog/2021-12-08-improving-github-code-search and cs.github.com/about. – Pol

@Pol wow that seems promising. registered now – Monogenesis

FYI. Anyone who wants to use the new code search feature is required to sign in to github first. – Taneka

@Taneka Good point, thank you for your feedback. I have edited the answer to include your comment. – Pol

Answer 2

To seach within a repository, add the URL parametes /search?q=search_terms at the root of the repo, for example:

https://github.com/bmewburn/vscode-intelephense/search?q=phpstorm

In the above example, it returns 2 results in Code and 160 results in Issues.

Krummhorn

This is cool! Do you know how to get it working for branches of the main repo? When I followed the format you provided it didn't work for me. – Oecd

As of now: Only the default branch is indexed for code search. See docs.github.com/en/free-pro-team@latest/github/… – Krummhorn

Answer 3

Recent private repositories have a search field for searching through that repo.

Bafflingly, it looks like this functionality is not available to public repositories, though.

Coyne

I wonder if this is a lowly commercial move to make people upgrade to the paying version? Doesn't sound like github but still. – Aerothermodynamics

@Aerothermodynamics It don't think it is done as an encouragement to upgrade, as even after upgrading, you won't get that search field for public repositories. Instead, I think that main search uses an index which doesn't include private repositories, and so you don't loose functionality when paying for a private repository, they had to add another way to search through that private repository only, hence the additional text field. – Eisler

Imagine the overhead of them having a search index for every line of code in every repo! Insane! That's why they only do it for private repos.. – Roustabout

The search is now in the header, same as global search. – Presto

Answer 4

UPDATE

The bookmarklet hack below is broken due to XHR issues and API changes.

Thankfully Github now has "A Whole New Code Search" which does the job superbly.

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Checkout this voodoo: Github code search userscript.

Follow the directions there, or if you hate bloating your browser with scripts and extensions, use my bookmarkified bundle of the userscript:

javascript:(function(){var s='https://raw.githubusercontent.com/skratchdot/github-enhancement-suite/master/build/github-enhancement-suite.user.js',t='text/javascript',d=document,n=navigator,e;(e=d.createElement('script')).src=s;e.type=t;d.getElementsByTagName('head')[0].appendChild(e)})();doIt('');void('');

Save the source above as the URL of a new bookmark. Browse to any Github repo, click the bookmark, and bam: in-page, ajaxified code search.

CAVEAT Github must index a repo before you can search it.

Abracadabra...

Here's a sample search from the annotated ECMAScript 5.1 specification repository:

Druggist

When I use the plugin (Chrome) it works fine in the scratchdot/github-code-search repo, but not in any other repo. – Nostrum

It should work in any repo's home page. Perhaps you're trying from a different page? I posted a screenshot of a sample search in a different repository in my post. – Druggist

Aha! I actually discovered why those searches may have failed: a repo must wait its turn for indexing. Given the zillion active repositories, I suspect that takes a bit of time. – Druggist

Love the bookmarklet idea, but not compliant with modern browsers. – Compressibility

@Compressibility that's news to me. You might want to let Google and Mozilla know too. – Druggist

I figured out why the plugin isn't working, its because the repo name needs to be in lower case. (See my comment to VonC's answer above). I already submitted a patch on GitHub, hopefully the original author will see it. github.com/skratchdot/github-code-search.user.js/pull/5 – Amargo

Seems like search option is not working anymore on Github code search userscript. – Antihelix

Answer 5

While @VonC's answer works for some repositories, unfortunately for many repositories you can't right now. Github is simply not indexing them (as commented originally by @emddudley). They haven't stated this anywhere on their website, but they will tell you if you ask support:

From: Tim Pease
We have stopped adding newly pushed code into our codesearch index. The volume of code has outgrown our current search index, and we are working on moving to a more scalable search architecture. I'm sorry for the annoyance. We do not have an estimate for when this new search index will be up and running, but when it is ready a blog post will be published (https://github.com/blog).

Annoyingly there is no way to tell which repositories are not indexed other than the lack of results (which also could be from a bad query).

There also is no way to track this issue other than waiting for them to blog it (or watching here on SO).

From: Tim Pease
I am afraid our issue tracker is internal, but we can notify you as soon as the new search index is up and running.

Montherlant

They should at least mention that some search results may be omitted. It totally sucks when I refactor code and I search for occurrences of code that are there but not mentioned by GitHub. – Salazar

Answer 6

There is a really nice project called github1s @ https://github.com/conwnet/github1s.

Basically you change the url of any repo https://github.com/microsoft/vscode to https://github1s.com/microsoft/vscode and then you can use the built in search function in the editor, to search for anything in a repository.

Maurreen

Similarly to github1s, GitHub also supports online vscode editor on github.dev. So you can view the code at https://github.dev/microsoft/vscode. Read more here. – Claritaclarity

Answer 7

Go here: https://github.com/search and enter "pattern repo:user_name/repo_name".

For example, to search for cnn_learner in the fastai repo of user fastai, enter this:

cnn_learner repo:fastai/fastai

That's it. The only annoyance is you'll need an extra click. It will tell you:

We couldn’t find any repositories matching 'cnn_learner repo:fastai/fastai'

because by default it searches for repositories matching that search string...

So just click on the left on "Code" and it will display what you want.

Or get the code search results directly with a URL like this:

https://github.com/search?q=cnn_learner+repo%3Afastai%2Ffastai&type=code

Splendor

This seems to be broken in 2022 and results in this error: "The requested content has not yet been indexed, please try again in a few moments." How is it that github has no code search in 2022 other than an ongoing closed beta? – Autointoxication

huh, the search by URL seems to work fine still, for example searching for "html" in the code of repository "hbd" of "kaicarver": github.com/search?q=html+repo%3Akaicarver%2Fhbd&type=code or search for "monaco" in the code of repository "vscode" of "microsoft" github.com/… – Splendor

Answer 8

Use your search term(s) and in:file in the Search box.

The Search will create a dropdown that asks you where you want to search.

Project

quickest solution at time of writing – Lineolate

Best and quickest one. – Ahead

Answer 9

Simply use SourceGraph.com instead to search in GitHub, or install its extension:

I search the source code inside of Github Repositories with the free Sourcegraph Chrome Extension

I skimmed through SourceForge's Chrome Extension Docs and looked at just what I needed for searching for directory names with Github's Search Engine itself by reading some of Github's Codebase Searching Doc

Instruction

Answer 10

Visit that repo's homepage, then type your search term into the search box on the top left.

The first suggested result will be tagged "in this repository". Click on that, or hit enter.

Ladino

Answer 11

Google allows you to search in the project, but not the code :(

site:https://github.com/CreateJS/EaselJS test

Delve

Answer 12

GitHub documentation says -

octocat in:file matches code where "octocat" appears in the file contents.

octocat in:path matches code where "octocat" appears in the file > path.

octocat in:file,path matches code where "octocat" appears in the > file contents or the file path.

Wenona