title: Search changes to a filename pattern in Git history

date: 2020-10-11

layout: post

lang: en

ref: search-changes-to-a-filename-pattern-in-git-history

eu_categories: git

This is [yet][git-til-1] [another][git-til-2] ["search in Git"][git-til-3] TIL entry. You could say that Git has a unintuitive CLI, or that is it very powerful.

I wanted to search for an old file that I new that was in the history of the repository, but was deleted some time ago. So I didn't really remember the name, only bits of it.

I immediately went to the list of TILs I had written on searching in Git, but it wasn't readily obvious how to do it, so here it goes:

git log -- *pattern*

You could add globs before the pattern to match things on any directory, and add our -p friend to promptly see the diffs:

git log -p -- **/*pattern*

[git-til-1]: {% link _tils/2020-08-14-browse-a-git-repository-at-a-specific-commit.md %} [git-til-2]: {% link _tils/2020-08-16-search-in-git.md %} [git-til-3]: {% link _tils/2020-08-28-grep-online-repositories.md %}