Question

I have deleted a file or some code in a file sometime in the past. Can I search through the content (not just the commit messages)?

A very poor solution is to grep the log:

git log -p | grep <pattern>

However, this doesn’t return the commit hash straight away. I played around with git grep to no avail.

Answer 1

You should use the pickaxe (-S) option of git log.

To search for Foo:

git log -SFoo -- path_containing_change
git log -SFoo --since=2009.1.1 --until=2010.1.1 -- path_containing_change

See Git history – find lost line by keyword for more.

-S (named pickaxe) comes originally from a git diff option (Git v0.99, May 2005).
Then -S (pickaxe) was ported to git log in May 2006 with Git 1.4.0-rc1.

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As Jakub Narębski commented:

• this looks for differences that introduce or remove an instance of <string>.
  It usually means "revisions where you added or removed line with ‘Foo’".

• the --pickaxe-regex option allows you to use extended POSIX regex instead of searching for a string.
  Example (from git log): git log -S"frotz\(nitfol" --pickaxe-regex

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As Rob commented, this search is case-sensitive – he opened a follow-up question on how to search case-insensitive.

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Hi Angel notes in the comments:

Executing a git log -G<regexp> --branches --all (the -G is same as -S but for regexes) does same thing as the accepted one (git grep <regexp> $(git rev-list --all)), but it soooo much faster!

The accepted answer was still searching for text after ≈10 minutes of me running it, whereas this one gives results after ≈4 seconds ‍♂️.
The output here is more useful as well