Git Grep

Git has a pretty useful implementation of Grep that is recursive by default and respects .gitignore

Useful options

• -i same as --ignore-case ignores the case sensitivity
• -w same as --word-regexp match patterns at word boundaries
• -v same as --invert-match selects non-matching lines
• -h hides the filename for each match
• -l same shows only the file names of files that contain the matches
• -O same as --open-files-in-pager[=<pager>] opens the matching files in the pager, pager can be configured in core.pager
• -n same as --line-number prefix the line number to matching lines
• --break print empty lines between matches from different files
• --heading show the filename above the matches instead of the start of each line
• -<num> show leading and trailing lines for a match
• -A <num> show trailing lines per match
• -B <num> show leading lines per match
• -C <num> show of context lines before and after the match
• -- signals the end of options, the rest of the parameters are limiters

Examples:

# Looks for '// todo' (case insensitive) and open files in nvim buffers 
git grep -i -Onvim  '^// todo' .

# Looks for time_t in all tracked .c and .h files in the working directory and its subdirectories.
git grep 'time_t' -- '*.[ch]'

# Looks for solution, excluding files in Documentation.
git grep solution -- :^Documentation