How to find which commits removed a line that contain a specific string?

Question

I have a file that is no longer referenced anywhere in my code. I am looking for find which commits removed a reference to this file. (I have no idea which files used to reference it).

I know that git log -S would find commits that either added or removed this string. What I am looking for really is the ability to limit this search to just those lines that were removed. Is this possible?

Answer 1

I would like to see an easier solution. But with some shell-Scripting it would look like:

for id in $(git log -Sstring --pretty=%h)
do
  if [ "$(git show $id | grep "+.*string")" != "" ]
  then
    echo $id
  fi
done