vscode search for a text only in git changes

Question

Before to publish branch sometimes I want to search for a specific keyword to ensure I have fixed it correctly everywhere. The problem is, I want to search it only in changes not for a whole project.

Is it possible?

Answer 1

As AsGoodAsItGets pointed out in one of the comments there is a feature request pending on VS Code github which will allow us to do that.

In the meantime I have a workaround:

1. Close all open files
2. Open Source Control

3. Right click on Changes and choose Open changed files. Note that it will open also deleted files.

4. Go to Search and select Search only in Open Editors

Not ideal, but that's how I search for my console.log leftovers ;)

Answer 2

Refer these screenshots. You can search in Open files easily.

Also you can use File to include feature

If you want to find all historical commits where commit message contains given word, use

$ git log --grep=word

If you want to find all commits where "word" was added or removed in the file contents (to be more exact: where number of occurences of "word" changed), i.e. search the commit contents, use so called 'pickaxe' search with

$ git log -Sword

In modern git there is also

$ git log -Gword

to look for differences whose added or removed line matches "word" (also commit contents).

Note that -G by default accepts a regex, while -S accepts a string, but can be modified to accept regexes using the --pickaxe-regex.