How to search through all Git and Mercurial commits in the repository for a certain string?

Question

I have a Git repository with few branches and dangling commits. I would like to search all such commits in the repository for a specific string.

I know how to get a log of all commits in history, but these don't include branches or dangling blobs, just HEAD's history. I want to get them all, to find a specific commit that got misplaced.

I would also like to know how to do this in Mercurial, as I'm considering the switch

Answer 1

You can use git log --grep=<foo> --grep=<bar> (or git log --author=<foo> --grep=<bar> that internally translates to two --grep) to find commits that match either of patterns (implicit OR semantic).

Because of being line-oriented, the useful AND semantic is to use git log --all-match --grep=<foo> --grep=<bar> to find commit that has both line matching first and line matching second somewhere.

With git grep you can combine multiple patterns (all which must use the -e <regexp> form) with --or (which is the default), --and, --not, ( and ). For grep --all-match means that file must have lines that match each of alternatives.