Exact code search

  • Tier: Premium, Ultimate
  • Offering: GitLab.com, GitLab Self-Managed
  • Status: Beta
History

This feature is in beta and subject to change without notice. For more information, see epic 9404.

With exact code search, you can use exact match and regular expression modes to search for code in all GitLab or in a specific project.

Exact code search is powered by Zoekt and is used by default in groups where the feature is enabled.

In user preferences, you can disable exact code search to use advanced search instead.

Zoekt search API

History

The availability of this feature is controlled by a feature flag. For more information, see the history. This feature is available for testing, but not ready for production use.

With the Zoekt search API, you can use the search API for exact code search. If you want to use advanced search or basic search instead, see specify a search type.

By default, the Zoekt search API is disabled on GitLab.com to avoid breaking changes. To request access to this feature, contact GitLab.

History

The availability of this feature is controlled by a feature flag. For more information, see the history. This feature is available for testing, but not ready for production use.

Use this feature to search code across the entire GitLab instance.

Global code search does not perform well on large GitLab instances. When this feature is enabled for instances with more than 20,000 projects, your search might time out.

Search modes

History

GitLab has two search modes:

  • Exact match mode: returns results that exactly match the query.
  • Regular expression mode: supports regular and boolean expressions.

The exact match mode is used by default. To switch to the regular expression mode, to the right of the search box, select Use regular expression ( regular-expression ).

Syntax

This table shows some example queries for exact match and regular expression modes.

QueryExact match modeRegular expression mode
"foo""foo"foo
foo file:^doc/foo in directories that start with /docfoo in directories that start with /doc
"class foo""class foo"class foo
class fooclass fooclass and foo
foo or barfoo or barfoo or bar
class Fooclass Foo (case sensitive)class (case insensitive) and Foo (case sensitive)
class Foo case:yesclass Foo (case sensitive)class and Foo (both case sensitive)
foo -barfoo -barfoo but not bar
foo file:jsfoo in files with names that contain jsfoo in files with names that contain js
foo -file:testfoo in files with names that do not contain testfoo in files with names that do not contain test
foo lang:rubyfoo in Ruby source codefoo in Ruby source code
foo file:\.js$foo in files with names that end with .jsfoo in files with names that end with .js
foo.*barfoo.*bar (literal)foo.*bar (regular expression)
sym:foofoo in symbols like class, method, and variable namesfoo in symbols like class, method, and variable names

Known issues

  • You can only search files smaller than 1 MB with less than 20_000 trigrams. For more information, see issue 455073.
  • You can use exact code search on the default branch of a project only. For more information, see issue 403307.
  • Multiple matches on a single line are counted as one result. For more information, see issue 514526.
  • If you encounter results where newlines are not displayed correctly, you must update gitlab-zoekt to version 1.5.0 or later. For more information, see issue 516937.