GitHub Help

You can search for code globally across all of GitHub Enterprise, or search for code within a particular repository or organization. To search for code across all public repositories, you must be signed in to a GitHub Enterprise account. For more information, see "About searching on GitHub."

You can only search code using these code search qualifiers. Search qualifiers specifically for repositories, users, or commits, will not work when searching for code.

In this article:

• Considerations for code search
• Search by the file contents or file path
• Search within a user's or organization's repositories
• Search by location
• Search by language
• Search by file size
• Search by filename
• Search by file extension

Considerations for code search

Due to the complexity of searching code, there are some restrictions on how searches are performed:

• You must be signed in to search for code across all public repositories.
• Code in forks is only searchable if the fork has more stars than the parent repository. Forks with fewer stars than the parent repository are not indexed for code search. To include forks with more stars than their parent in the search results, you will need to add fork:true or fork:only to your query. For more information, see "Searching in forks."
• Only the default branch is indexed for code search. In most cases, this will be the master branch.* Only files smaller than 5 MB are searchable.
• Only the first 500 KB of each file is searchable.
• Only repositories with fewer than 500,000 files are searchable.
• Users who are signed in can search all public repositories. Anonymous searches must include a limit on org:, user:, or repo:.
• Except with filename searches, you must always include at least one search term when searching source code. For example, searching for language:javascript is not valid, while amazing language:javascript is.
• At most, search results can show two fragments from the same file, but there may be more results within the file.
• You can't use the following wildcard characters as part of your search query: . , : ; / \ ` ' " = * ! ? # $ & + ^ | ~ < > ( ) { } [ ]. The search will simply ignore these symbols.

Search by the file contents or file path

With the in qualifier you can restrict your search to the contents of the source code file, the file path, or both. When you omit this qualifier, only the file contents are searched.

Qualifier	Example
in:file	octocat in:file matches code where "octocat" appears in the file contents.
in:path	octocat in:path matches code where "octocat" appears in the file path.
	octocat in:file,path matches code where "octocat" appears in the file contents or the file path.

Search within a user's or organization's repositories

To search the code in all repositories owned by a certain user or organization, you can use the user or org qualifier. To search the code in a specific repository, you can use the repo qualifier.

Qualifier	Example
user:USERNAME	user:defunkt extension:rb matches code from @defunkt that ends in .rb.
org:ORGNAME	org:github extension:js matches code from GitHub that ends in .js.
repo:USERNAME/REPOSITORY	repo:mozilla/shumway extension:as matches code from @mozilla's shumway project that ends in .as.

Search by file location

You can use the path qualifier to search for source code that appears at a specific location in a repository. Use path:/ to search for files that are located at the root level of a repository. Or specify a directory name or the path to a directory to search for files that are located within that directory or any of its subdirectories.

Qualifier	Example
path:/	octocat filename:readme path:/ matches readme files with the word "octocat" that are located at the root level of a repository.
path:DIRECTORY	form path:cgi-bin language:perl matches Perl files with the word "form" in a cgi-bin directory, or in any of its subdirectories.
path:PATH/TO/DIRECTORY	console path:app/public language:javascript matches JavaScript files with the word "console" in an app/public directory, or in any of its subdirectories (even if they reside in app/public/js/form-validators).

Search by language

You can search for code based on what language it's written in.

Qualifier	Example
language:LANGUAGE	element language:xml size:100 matches code with the word "element" that's marked as being XML and has exactly 100 bytes.
	display language:scss matches code with the word "display," that's marked as being SCSS.
	org:mozilla language:markdown matches code from all @mozilla's repositories that's marked as Markdown.

Search by file size

You can use the size qualifier to search for source code based on the size of the file where the code exists. The size qualifier uses greater than, less than, and range qualifiers to filter results based on the byte size of the file in which the code is found.

Qualifier	Example
size:n	function size:>10000 language:python matches code with the word "function," written in Python, in files that are larger than 10 KB.

Search by filename

The filename qualifier matches code files with a certain filename. You can also find a file in a repository using the file finder. For more information, see "Finding files on GitHub."

Qualifier	Example
filename:FILENAME	filename:linguist matches files named "linguist."
	filename:.vimrc commands matches .vimrc files with the word "commands."
	filename:test_helper path:test language:ruby matches Ruby files named test_helper within the test directory.

Search by file extension

The extension qualifier matches code files with a certain file extension.

Qualifier	Example
extension:EXTENSION	form path:cgi-bin extension:pm matches code with the word "form," under cgi-bin, with the .pm file extension.
	icon size:>200000 extension:css matches files larger than 200 KB that end in .css and have the word "icon."

Further reading

• "Sorting search results"
• "Searching in forks"