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gh search

Search across all of GitHub.

Excluding search results that match a qualifier

In a browser, the GitHub search syntax supports excluding results that match a search qualifier by prefixing the qualifier with a hyphen. For example, to search for issues that do not have the label "bug", you would use -label:bug as a search qualifier.

gh supports this syntax in gh search as well, but it requires extra command line arguments to avoid the hyphen being interpreted as a command line flag because it begins with a hyphen.

On Unix-like systems, you can use the -- argument to indicate that the arguments that follow are not a flag, but rather a query string. For example:

$ gh search issues -- "my-search-query -label:bug"

On PowerShell, you must use both the --% argument and the -- argument to produce the same effect. For example:

$ gh --% search issues -- "my search query -label:bug"

See the following for more information:

• GitHub search syntax: https://docs.github.com/en/search-github/getting-started-with-searching-on-github/understanding-the-search-syntax#exclude-results-that-match-a-qualifier
• The PowerShell stop parse flag --%: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/module/microsoft.powershell.core/about/about_parsing?view=powershell-7.5#the-stop-parsing-token
• The Unix-like -- argument: https://www.gnu.org/software/bash/manual/bash.html#Shell-Builtin-Commands-1

Available commands

• gh search code
• gh search commits
• gh search issues
• gh search prs
• gh search repos

See also

• gh