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Exact code search

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

  • Introduced in GitLab 15.9 with flags named index_code_with_zoekt and search_code_with_zoekt. Disabled by default.

FLAG: On self-managed GitLab, by default this feature is not available. To make it available, an administrator can enable the feature flags named index_code_with_zoekt and search_code_with_zoekt. On GitLab.com, this feature is available. On GitLab Dedicated, this feature is not available. This feature is not ready for production use.

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 expressions and exact strings to search for code in a project. You can use backslashes to escape special characters and double quotes to search for exact strings.

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

Zoekt search API

FLAG: On self-managed GitLab, by default this feature is available. To hide the feature, an administrator can disable the feature flag named zoekt_search_api. On GitLab.com and GitLab Dedicated, this feature is not available. This feature is not ready for production use.

With the Zoekt search API, you can use the search API for exact code search. When this feature is disabled, basic or advanced search is used instead.

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: On self-managed GitLab, by default this feature is not available. To make it available, an administrator can enable the feature flag named zoekt_cross_namespace_search. On GitLab.com and GitLab Dedicated, this feature is not available. This feature is 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. If you enable this feature for instances with more than 20,000 projects, your search might time out.

Syntax

This table shows some example queries for exact code search.

Query Description
foo Returns files that contain foo.
foo file:^doc/ Returns files that contain foo in directories that start with doc/.
"class foo" Returns files that contain the exact string class foo.
class foo Returns files that contain both class and foo.
foo or bar Returns files that contain either foo or bar.
class Foo Returns files that contain class (case insensitive) and Foo (case sensitive).
class Foo case:yes Returns files that contain class and Foo (both case sensitive).
foo -bar Returns files that contain foo but not bar.
foo file:js Searches for foo in files with names that contain js.
foo -file:test Searches for foo in files with names that do not contain test.
foo lang:ruby Searches for foo in Ruby source code.
foo file:\.js$ Searches for foo in files with names that end with .js.
foo.*bar Searches for strings that match the regular expression foo.*bar.