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Keyword search

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Use Code Search to find a keyword in your codebase. When you are viewing a specific repository, search queries that repository. When you search at the project level from the Repositories list, search queries every repository in the project.

What you will learn​

  • Query syntax: How exact matching, Boolean operators, and case sensitivity work.
  • Filters: How to narrow results by language, file name, and repository.
  • Scope: How recursive search behaves at project, organization, and account level.
  • Results: What search returns and what it does not cover.
note

You can search only the repositories you have permission to access.

Search syntax and filters​

Beyond plain keyword strings, you can use query syntax and filters to refine a search.

Match an exact string​

Wrap your keyword string in quotation marks to match an exact string. Searching yarn install returns results containing both keywords anywhere and in any order. Searching "yarn install" returns only results containing that exact phrase in that order.

Boolean operators​

Use the Boolean operators and, or, and not to build more inclusive, exclusive, or complex queries:

  • And: Any plain keyword phrase is treated as and. Do not declare and explicitly. For example, yarn install is interpreted as yarn and install.
  • Not: Use not or a hyphen (-). For example, yarn -install is the same as yarn not install.
  • Or: Use or, such as yarn or bundle.

To search for the literal words or or not, wrap your keywords in quotation marks so search does not read them as operators. For example, "if not" or "if else".

Case sensitivity​

Keyword search is case insensitive by default. To enable case sensitivity, include case:yes. For example, class Button case:yes searches for files containing class and Button with case sensitivity.

Regular expressions​

Keyword search supports simple patterns and substrings. For more complex expressions, enable regular expression search by clicking .* to the right of the search box, which treats every search pattern as a regular expression.

Harness supports RE2 syntax.

Special characters​

Search engines and regular expressions reserve certain characters for query functionality, such as an asterisk for a wildcard. When your keyword string contains one of these characters, escape it with a backslash (\) so search reads it literally.

Characters that require escaping include asterisks, colons, single and double quotation marks, parentheses, curly braces, brackets, ampersands, question marks, and hyphens.

For example, to search for the literal string "feedback" including the quotation marks, escape them as \"feedback\". Without the escape, your query is treated as exact string matching and returns any instance of the word feedback, with or without punctuation.

To limit a search to one source code language, use the Language search results filter or the lang:LANGUAGE query syntax. For example, build lang:go returns results for the keyword build in Go files.

Use file:KEYWORD to search file names. For example, file:README returns file names containing README.

Search scope​

A search that starts inside a repository is scoped to that repository automatically. To search more than one repository, go to a Harness project, organization, or account and search recursively across every repository in that scope.

Searching from the organization view covers all repositories at organization level and all repositories in every project in that organization. Searching from the account view covers every repository across the account and all organizations.

Use the Repository search results filter to limit results to specific repositories in the current scope. Within an account or organization search, you can also disable recursive search and query only the repositories at that level.

Search results​

Search results include matches in code, file names, and file paths. Keyword search does not currently cover non-code entities such as pull requests, tags, and branches.

  • File name or path match: Displays the full file path with the matching portion highlighted.
  • Code match: Displays the file path and up to 25 matching code snippets per file.

Select a search result to open the Files page for that file.

Search results filters​

Depending on your query and search context, you can filter results by repository, file path, or language. The repository filter covers only repositories you can access.

You can now build precise queries and scope them to the right set of repositories.

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