Question

I am just looking for an example ( the correct command to fire in the advance search at github ) about searching a word inside a folder of a particular repository. I guess this will involve the “path:” option but not sure how to use it

As an example I need to search for a function name “clean” or a test case for “clean” or similar function inside the jquery test suite at the following location –
https://github.com/jquery/jquery/tree/master/test

I understand there are some filters like repo: and path: provided by github but not sure how to use them.

Also I am not satisfied with an answer posted for a similar question at –
Search a github repository for the file defining a given function

I understand I can fork it to my local machine and do a search there but I don’t want to download the whole repository simply to search it. I just need to search it online at the github site itself.

Thanks in advance !!

Answer 1

I get 41 result with this query.

The key is to specify the user/reponame, not the the reponame:

repo:hadley/ggplot2

Combined with wildcard for the path argument, I select only one argument with this query:

repo:hadley/ggplot2 facet_wrap path:inst/*.r

So, for path, the key is to add a wildcard (which doesn’t seem to be documented anywhere).
path:inst/ alone won’t work. path:* or path:*.r will.

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From the comments:

I need to find "beforeSend" entry which is in this file – "jquery / test / unit / ajax.js" at github.com/jquery/jquery/blob/master/test/unit/ajax.js but when I fire repo:jeresig/jquery beforeSend path:jquery/test/unit*.js in the advance search I don’t get any results.
I am also confused which user should I use as jquery has many contributors like John Resig, timmywil

In this case (2012):

• the repo is jquery/jquery (no need for a username here)
• the path: directive to use must not repeat the repo name: so, path:test/unit*.js, not path:jquery/test/unit*.js

     repo:jquery/jquery beforeSend path:test/unit*.js

will work, and provide 4 results within JQuery Code.

Update 2022:

The query would be:

     repo:jquery/jquery beforeSend path:test extension:*js type=Code&ref=advsearch