This page provides a visual breakdown of our Search Query Language and a handful of examples to get you started. It is complementary to our syntax reference and illustrates syntax using railroad diagrams instead of tables.
How to read railroad diagrams. Follow the lines in these railroad diagrams to see how pieces of syntax combine. When a line splits, it means there are multiple options available. When it is possible to repeat a previous syntax, the split line will loop back on itself like this:
<script> ComplexDiagram( OneOrMore( Terminal("repeatable"))).addTo(); </script> <script> ComplexDiagram( OneOrMore( Choice(0, Terminal("search pattern", {href: "#search-pattern"}), Terminal("parameter", {href: "#parameter"})))).addTo(); </script>At a basic level, a query consists of search patterns and parameters. Typical queries contain one or more space-separated search patterns that describe what to search, and parameters refine searches by filtering results or changing search behavior.
Example: repo:github.com/sourcegraph/sourcegraph file:schema.graphql The result ↗
Build query expressions by combining basic queries and operators like AND or OR. Group expressions with parentheses to build more complex expressions. If there are no balanced parentheses, AND operators bind tighter, so foo or bar and baz means foo or (bar and baz). You may also use lowercase and or or.
Example: repo:github.com/sourcegraph/sourcegraph rtr AND newRouter ↗
A pattern to search. By default, the pattern is searched literally. The kind of search may be toggled to change how a pattern matches:
Perform a regular expression search. We support RE2 syntax. Quoting a pattern will perform a literal search.
Example: foo.*bar.*baz ↗ "foo bar" ↗
Perform a structural search. See our dedicated documentation to learn more about structural search.
Example: fmt.Sprintf(":[format]", :[args]) ↗
Search parameters allow you to filter search results or modify search behavior.
<script> ComplexDiagram( Choice(0, Skip(), Terminal("-"), Sequence( Terminal("NOT"), Terminal("space", {href: "#whitespace"}))), Choice(0, Terminal("repo:"), Terminal("r:")), Choice(0, Terminal("regex", {href: "#regular-expression"}), Terminal("built-in", {href: "#built-in-repo-predicate"})), Choice(0, Skip(), Sequence( Terminal("@"), Terminal("revision", {href: "#revision"})), Sequence( Terminal("space", {href: "#whitespace"}), Terminal("rev:"), Terminal("revision", {href: "#revision"})))).addTo(); </script>Search repositories that match the regular expression. A - before repo excludes the repository. By default, the repository will be searched at the HEAD commit of the default branch. You can optionally change the revision.
Example: repo:gorilla/mux testroute ↗ -repo:gorilla/mux testroute ↗
Search a repository at a given revision, for example, a branch name, commit hash, or Git tag.
Example: repo:^github\.com/sourcegraph/sourcegraph$@75ba004 get_embeddings ↗ or repo:^github\.com/sourcegraph/sourcegraph$ rev:v5.0.0 get_embeddings ↗
You can search multiple revisions by separating the revisions with :. Specify HEAD for the default branch.
Example: repo:^github\.com/sourcegraph/sourcegraph$ rev:v4.5.0:v5.0.0 disableNonCriticalTelemetry ↗ or repo:^github\.com/sourcegraph/[email protected]:v5.0.0 disableNonCriticalTelemetry ↗
Search files whose full path matches the regular expression. A - before file excludes the file from being searched.
Example: file:\.js$ httptest ↗ file:\.js$ -file:test http ↗
Only search files in the specified programming language, like typescript or python.
Example: lang:typescript encoding ↗
Set the search pattern to search using a dedicated parameter. Useful, for example, when searching literally for a string like repo:my-repo that may conflict with the syntax of parameters in this Sourcegraph language.
Example: repo:sourcegraph content:"repo:sourcegraph" ↗
Selects the specified result type from the set of search results. If a query produces results that aren't of the selected type, the results will be converted to the selected type.
For example, the query file:package.json lodash will return content matches for lodash in package.json files. If select:repo is added, the containing repository will be selected and the repositories that contain package.json files that contain the term lodash will be returned. All selected results are deduplicated, so if there are multiple content matches in a repository, select:repo will still only return unique results.
A query like type:commit example select:symbol will return no results because commits have no associated symbol and cannot be converted to that type.
Example:
fmt.Errorf select:repo ↗
zoektSearch select:file ↗
Select a specific kind of symbol. For example type:symbol select:symbol.function zoektSearch will only return functions that contain the literal zoektSearch.
Example:
type:symbol zoektSearch select:symbol.function ↗
When searching commit diffs, select only diffs where the pattern matches on added or removed lines. For example, search for recent commits that removed TODOs in your code.
- Note: if any line exists that satisfies the condition, the entire diff is included in the result set.
- Note: type:diff must be specified in the query.
Example:
repo:^github\.com/sourcegraph/sourcegraph$ type:diff TODO select:commit.diff.removed ↗
Select only directory paths of file results with select:file.directory. This is useful for discovering the directory paths that specify a package.json file, for example.
select:file.path returns the full path for the file and is equivalent to select:file. It exists as a fully-qualified alternative.
Example: file:package\.json select:file.directory ↗
Select owners associated with the results of a query.
Example: lang:TypeScript select:file.owners Displays owners of all TypeScript files.
Set whether the search pattern should perform a search of a certain type. Notable search types are symbol, commit, and diff.
Example: type:symbol path ↗ type:commit author:nick ↗
Set whether the search pattern should be treated case-sensitively. This is synonymous with the 
toggle button.
Example: OPEN_FILE case:yes ↗
Set to yes if repository forks should be included or only if only forks should be searched. Repository forks are excluded by default.
Example: fork:yes repo:sourcegraph ↗
Set to yes if archived repositories should be included or only if only archives should be searched. Archived repositories are excluded by default.
Example: archived:only repo:sourcegraph ↗
Retrieve N results. By default, Sourcegraph stops searching early and returns if it finds a full page of results. This is desirable for most interactive searches. To wait for all results, use count:all.
Example: count:1000 function ↗
count:all err↗
Set a search timeout. The time value is a string like 10s or 100ms, which is parsed by the Go time package's ParseDuration. By default, the timeout is set to 10 seconds, and the search will optimize for returning results as soon as possible. The timeout value cannot be set to longer than 1 minute.
Example: timeout:15s count:10000 func ↗ – sets a longer timeout for a search that contains a lot of results.
Filter results to only public or private repositories. The default is to include both private and public repositories.
Example: type:repo visibility:public ↗
Set whether the pattern should run a literal search, regular expression search, or structural search. This parameter is available as a command-line and accessibility option and is synonymous with the visual search pattern toggles.
<script> ComplexDiagram( Choice(0, Terminal("has.meta(...)", {href: "#repo-has-meta"}), Terminal("has.file(...)", {href: "#repo-has-file-and-content"}), Terminal("has.content(...)", {href: "#repo-has-content"}), Terminal("has.path(...)", {href: "#repo-has-path"}), Terminal("has.commit.after(...)", {href: "#repo-has-commit-after"}), Terminal("has.topic(...)", {href: "#repo-has-topic"}), Terminal("has.description(...)", {href: "#repo-has-description"}))).addTo(); </script> Experimental Tagging repositories with key-value pairs is an experimental feature in Sourcegraph 4.0. It's a preview of functionality we're currently exploring to make searching large numbers of repositories easier. To enable this feature, enable the `repository-metadata` feature flag for your org. If you have any feedback, please let us know! <script> ComplexDiagram( Terminal("has.meta"), Terminal("("), Choice(0, Sequence(Terminal("string", {href: "#string"}), Terminal(":"), Terminal("string", {href: "#string"})), Sequence(Terminal("string", {href: "#string"})), ), Terminal(")")).addTo(); </script>Search only inside repositories that are associated with the provided key-value pair, key, or tag.
Example: repo:has.meta(team:sourcegraph) ↗ or repo:has.meta(language) ↗
Search only inside repositories that contain a file matching the path: with content: filters.
Example: repo:has.file(path:CHANGELOG content:fix) ↗
Note: repo:contains.file(...) is an alias for repo:has.file(...) and behaves identically.
Search only inside repositories that contain a file path matching the regular expression.
Example: repo:has.path(README) ↗
Note: repo:contains.path(...) is an alias for repo:has.path(..) and behaves identically.
Search only inside repositories that contain file content matching the regular expression.
Example: repo:github\.com/sourcegraph/.*$ repo:has.content(TODO) ↗
Note: repo:contains.content(...) is an alias for repo:has.content(...) and behaves identically.
Search only inside repositories that have the given GitHub/GitLab topic.
Example: repo:has.topic(code-search) ↗
Note: Topic search is currently only supported for GitHub and GitLab repos.
<script> ComplexDiagram( Terminal("has.commit.after"), Terminal("("), Terminal("string", {href: "#string"}), Terminal(")")).addTo(); </script>Search only inside repositories that contain a commit after some specified time. See git date formats for accepted formats. Use this to filter out stale repositories that don’t contain commits past the specified time frame. This parameter is experimental.
Example: repo:has.commit.after(1 month ago) ↗
Note: repo:contains.commit.after(...) is an alias for repo:has.commit.after(...) and behaves identically.
Search only inside repositories having a description matching the given regular expression.
Example: repo:has.description(go package) ↗
Search only inside files that contain content matching the provided regexp pattern.
Example: file:has.content(test) ↗
Note: file:contains.content(...) is an alias for file:has.content(...) and behaves identically.
Search only inside files that have an owner associated matching given string.
Note: When no parameter is supplied, the predicate only includes files with any owner assigned to them:
file:has.owner()will include files with any owner assigned.-file:has.owner()will only include files without an owner.
Search only inside files that have a contributor whose name or email matches the provided regex pattern.
<script> ComplexDiagram( Choice(0, Terminal("string", {href: "#string"}), Terminal("quoted string", {href: "#quoted-string"}))).addTo(); </script>A string that is interpreted as a RE2 regular expression.
<script> ComplexDiagram( Terminal("string")).addTo(); </script>An unquoted string is any contiguous sequence of characters not containing whitespace.
<script> ComplexDiagram( Choice(0, Terminal('"any string"'), Terminal("'any string'"))).addTo(); </script>Any string, including whitespace, may be quoted with single ' or double " quotes. Quotes can be escaped with \. Literal \ characters will need to be escaped, for example, \\.
Set parameters that apply only to commit and diff searches.
<script> ComplexDiagram( Terminal("author:"), Terminal("regular expression", {href: "#regular-expression"})).addTo(); </script>Include commits or diffs that are authored by the user.
<script> ComplexDiagram( Choice(0, Terminal("before:"), Terminal("until:")), Terminal("quoted string", {href: "#quoted-string"})).addTo(); </script>Include results having a commit date before the specified time frame. Times are interpreted as UTC by default. Many forms are accepted for the argument, such as:
november 1 20191 november 20192019.11.111/1/201901.11.2019Thu, 07 Apr 2005 22:13:13 +02002005-04-072005-04-07T22:13:132005-04-07T22:13:13+07:00yesterday5 days ago20 minutes ago2 weeks ago3:003pm16327828091632782809 -0600
Example: before:"last thursday" ↗ before:"november 1 2019" ↗
Include results having a commit date after the specified time frame. Times are interpreted as UTC by default. Many forms are accepted for the argument, such as:
november 1 20191 november 20192019.11.111/1/201901.11.2019Thu, 07 Apr 2005 22:13:13 +02002005-04-072005-04-07T22:13:132005-04-07T22:13:13+07:00yesterday5 days ago20 minutes ago2 weeks ago3:003pm16327828091632782809 -0600
Example: after:"6 weeks ago" ↗ after:"november 1 2019" ↗
Include results having a commit message containing the string.
Example: type:commit message:"testing" ↗