'How to search on GitHub to get exact string matches, including special characters

I can search exact matches from Google by using quotes like "system <<-".

How can I do the same thing for GitHub?

Solution 1:^[1]

You couldn't (before 2022). The official GitHub searching rules:

Due to the complexity of searching code, there are a few restrictions on how searches are performed:

Only the default branch is considered. In most cases, this will be the master branch.

Only files smaller than 384 KB are searchable.

Only repositories with fewer than 500,000 files are searchable.

You must always include at least one search term when searching source code. For example, searching for language:go is not valid, while amazing language:go is.

At most, search results can show two fragments from the same file, but there may be more results within the file.

You can't use the following wildcard characters as part of your search query:
. , : ; / \ ` ' " = * ! ? # $ & + ^ | ~ < > ( ) { } [ ]
The search will simply ignore these symbols.

Update: GitHub supports literal strings now, but you can also try some more powerful ways below.

Try Sourcegraph

For complex search with regex support try Sourcegraph.

Clone and use `git-grep`:

git support searching in sources with git-grep command. Just clone a repository and use the command in the folder:

git grep "text-to-search"

Alternatives:

I recommend you to try ripgrep tool, it's fast and simple. Works like git-grep but looks nicer:

rg "text-to-search"

And you can use the standard grep to search any text in files:

grep -r "text-to-search" /repository

Solution 2:^[2]

You can use Google directly.

How about this?

"your_string_to_search" site::https://github.com
"your_string_to_search" site::https://gist.github.com

Solution 3:^[3]

Today I was trying to look for an exact match of filter class in files named logback.xml in any repo on Github. And I came up with the following query which did the job.

"filter class" in:file filename:logback.xml

To enable exact matches with quotes you need to follow your search with the "in:file" modifier. The matches are not quite exact, the word "class" will have to follow the word "filter", but it seems there can be 0 or more spaces or symbols characters between the two words.

Solution 4:^[4]

Adding to @mrgloom's answer, if you're looking for code in a specific programming language in Github using Google you could do something like this in Google's search bar:

state the specific string you're looking for using the "intext:" search operator
add the programming language you're interested in, using the "ext:" operator (i.e. "ext:py", "ext:R", "ext:rb", etc.)
search in all public repos in Github using the "site:" operator mrgloom mentioned.

Example:

intext:"%% 2 == 0" ext:R site:github.com

Solution 5:^[5]

Open a repository on GitHub, for example microsoft/fluentui
Press dot "." to open VS Code web interface
Go to search in the left panel
Enable indexing via the prompt below search bar
Huraaay! ? exact search works

Solution 6:^[6]

You can: Since Dec. 2021, your search, done from cs.github.com, can include special characters

Improving GitHub code search

(from Pavel Avgustinov)

Search for an exact string, with support for substring matches and special characters, or use regular expressions (enclosed in / separators).

So "system <<-" should work, on that new search site.

Solution 7:^[7]

If your package is in debian, you can use their code search, which supports regular expressions: https://codesearch.debian.net/

Solution 8:^[8]

As of 11/2/2021, this is possible by putting quotation marks around your search string

Without quotes:

With quotes:

While it's now possible to search exact strings, the functionality doesn't yet support searching on special characters. Example:

Solution 9:^[9]

If your search term is a filename or other substring which contains punctuation characters, a partial workaround to get GitHub's code search to return instances of that substring is to (1) replace the punctuation characters in your search term with spaces, and (2) enclose the search term in quotes.

For example, instead of using the search term:

repo:my_repo my_image_asset_1.svg

Try:

repo:my_repo "my image asset 1 svg"

This might not be a perfect solution in all cases; I imagine it might also match filenames like my-image-asset-1.svg. But depending on your use case, it might be "good enough"?

Solution 10:^[10]

If you quickly want to search inside a specific repo, try that:

Press . while viewing the repo to open it inside a browser-based VS Code window
Enter your search term into the menu on the left
Enable indexing

Solution 11:^[11]

I think $ dollar sign works. You should put it at the beginning and end of the search string.

Sources

This article follows the attribution requirements of Stack Overflow and is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Source: Stack Overflow

Solution	Source
Solution 1
Solution 2	mrgloom
Solution 3	Preview
Solution 4
Solution 5
Solution 6	VonC
Solution 7
Solution 8
Solution 9	Jon Schneider
Solution 10	garzj
Solution 11	Peter Csala

'How to search on GitHub to get exact string matches, including special characters

Solution 1:[1]

Try Sourcegraph

Clone and use git-grep:

Solution 2:[2]

Solution 3:[3]

Solution 4:[4]

Solution 5:[5]

Solution 6:[6]

Improving GitHub code search

Solution 7:[7]

Solution 8:[8]

Solution 9:[9]

Solution 10:[10]

Solution 11:[11]