Search for text in git commit range

Question

I need to search for text "TEXT" in past 20 git commits (or range)
I need to see filename and line number where I have a match.

Note:
I want to search commits content, but not project on that commit as git grep does.
By commits content I mean what I can see using git diff HEAD^^^..HEAD

Closest I got is using git log --raw -GTEXT, it shows me commit which contains "TEXT" in commit content and show file names. Still no line numbers however.

And with some piping
git diff $(git log -n 20 --pretty=format:%h -GTEXT) | grep -E 'TEXT|\+\+\+|@@\s'
It is still somewhat wordy and with a lot of noise, if you have better solution, please answer.

Answer 1

Get the last 20 commits:

git log -n 20

Get each to an associative array:

declare -A COMMITS # Declare associative array
COMMITNUMBER=0

while read -r line; do # For each line, do
    # Add 1 to COMMITNUMBER, if the current line contains "commit [0-9a-f]* (e.g., new associative array index for each commit)
    # As this'll happen straight way, our array is technically 1-indexed (starts from "${COMMITS[1]}", not "${COMMITS[0]}")
    REGEX="commit\s[0-9a-f]*"
    [[ "$line" =~ $REGEX ]] && COMMITNUMBER=$(( COMMITNUMBER+1 ))

    # Append the commit line to the index
    COMMITS[$COMMITNUMBER]="${COMMITS[$COMMITNUMBER]} $line"
done < <(git log -n 20)

Then iterate:

for i in "${!COMMITS[@]}"
do
  echo "key  : $i"
  echo "value: ${COMMITS[$i]}"
done

This gives similar output to below:

key  : 1
value:  commit 778f88ec8ad4f454aa5085cd0c8d51441668207c Author: Nick <[email protected]> Date:   Sun Aug 7 11:43:24 2016 +0100  Second commit 
key  : 2
value:  commit a38cd7b2310038af180a548c03b086717d205a61 Author: Nick <[email protected]> Date:   Sun Aug 7 11:25:31 2016 +0100  Some commit

Now you can search each in the loop using grep or anything, and match what you need:

for i in "${!COMMITS[@]}"
do
    REGEX="Date:[\s]*Sun\sAug\7"
    if [[ "${COMMITS[$i]}" =~ $REGEX ]]; then
        echo "The following commit matched '$REGEX':"
        echo "${COMMITS[$i]}"
    fi
done

Altogether:

search_last_commits() {
    [[ -z "$1" ]] && echo "Arg #1: No search pattern specified" && return 1
    [[ -z "$2" ]] && echo "Arg #2: Number required for number of commits to return" && return 1

declare -A COMMITS # Declare associative array
COMMITNUMBER=0

    while read -r line; do # For each line, do
        # Add 1 to COMMITNUMBER, if the current line contains "commit [0-9a-f]* (e.g., new associative array index for each commit)
        # As this'll happen straight way, our array is technically 1-indexed (starts from "${COMMITS[1]}", not "${COMMITS[0]}")
        REGEX="commit\s[0-9a-f]*"
        [[ "$line" =~ $REGEX ]] && COMMITNUMBER=$(( COMMITNUMBER+1 ))

        # Append the commit line to the index
        COMMITS[$COMMITNUMBER]="${COMMITS[$COMMITNUMBER]} $line"
    done < <(git log -n $2)

    for i in "${!COMMITS[@]}"
    do
        REGEX="$1"
        if [[ "${COMMITS[$i]}" =~ $REGEX ]]; then
            echo "The following commit matched '$REGEX':"
            echo "${COMMITS[$i]}"
        fi
    done
}

EDIT:

Usage:

search_last_commits <search-term> <last-commits-quantity>

Example:

search_last_commits "Aug" 20

Answer 2

If you want to search through modified files in the range (and don't care about matching lines of the files that weren't actually modified in those commits) you can run:

git grep TEXT -- $(git diff --name-only RANGE)