GitHub CLI | Take GitHub to the command line

gh search code

gh search code <query> [flags]

Search within code in GitHub repositories.

The search syntax is documented at: https://docs.github.com/search-github/searching-on-github/searching-code

Note that these search results are powered by what is now a legacy GitHub code search engine. The results might not match what is seen on github.com, and new features like regex search are not yet available via the GitHub API.

For more information on handling search queries containing a hyphen, run gh search --help.

Options

--extension <string>

Filter on file extension

--filename <string>

Filter on filename

-q, --jq <expression>

Filter JSON output using a jq expression

--json <fields>

Output JSON with the specified fields

--language <string>

Filter results by language

-L, --limit <int> (default 30)

Maximum number of code results to fetch

--match <strings>

Restrict search to file contents or file path: {file|path}

--owner <strings>

Filter on owner

-R, --repo <OWNER/REPO>

Filter on repository, in OWNER/REPO format

--size <string>

Filter on size range, in kilobytes

-t, --template <string>

Format JSON output using a Go template; see "gh help formatting"

-w, --web

Open the search query in the web browser

JSON Fields

path, repository, sha, textMatches, url

Examples

# Search code matching "react" and "lifecycle"
$ gh search code react lifecycle

# Search code matching "error handling"
$ gh search code "error handling"

# Search code using raw search qualifiers as separate arguments
$ gh search code panic path:pkg language:go

# Search code matching "deque" in Python files
$ gh search code deque --language=python

# Search code matching "cli" in repositories owned by microsoft organization
$ gh search code cli --owner=microsoft

# Search code matching "panic" in the GitHub CLI repository
$ gh search code panic --repo cli/cli

# Search code matching keyword "lint" in package.json files
$ gh search code lint --filename package.json

See also

• gh search