Skip to content

Exact code search

DETAILS: Tier: Premium, Ultimate Offering: GitLab.com, Self-managed Status: Beta

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

With exact code search, you can use regular expression and exact match 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.

Enable exact code search

Zoekt search API

FLAG: 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.

Global code search

FLAG: 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

GitLab has two search modes:

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

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 regular expression and exact match modes.

Query Regular expression mode Exact match mode
"foo" foo "foo"
foo file:^doc/ foo in directories that start with /doc foo in directories that start with /doc
"class foo" class foo "class foo"
class foo class and foo class foo
foo or bar foo or bar foo or bar
class Foo class (case insensitive) and Foo (case sensitive) class Foo (case insensitive)
class Foo case:yes class and Foo (both case sensitive) class Foo (case sensitive)
foo -bar foo but not bar foo -bar
foo file:js foo in files with names that contain js foo in files with names that contain js
foo -file:test foo in files with names that do not contain test foo in files with names that do not contain test
foo lang:ruby foo in Ruby source code foo in Ruby source code
foo file:\.js$ foo in files with names that end with .js foo in files with names that end with .js
foo.*bar foo.*bar (regular expression) None
sym:foo foo in symbols like class, method, and variable names foo 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.