Writing Regex Queries

Basic Regex Queries

A plain query will match the content of a file.

client

This will match the term client in any of the files in the index. This applies to queries that contain whitespace:

apache license

will match any file that contains the exact string apache license. Non-exact, or fuzzy, matching is on the roadmap. These plain queries are also known as content: queries.

bloop can also match code symbols. These include identifiers like class, function and variable names:

symbol:Error

A regex query returns files whose content matches a regex. Regex queries are enclosed by /:

/class\s[a-z]/

bloop supports all UTF-8 expressions supported by Rust's regex crate.

Filters

bloop let's you narrow down search results with a set of search filters. These are repo:, path: and lang:. For example, the query:

repo:BurntSushi/aho-corasick ErrorKind

will match the term ErrorKind in any file in the aho-corasick repo. Filters can be combined to construct highly-specific search queries:

repo:BurntSushi/aho-corasick path:src/error ErrorKind lang:Rust

will only match the term ErrorKind in Rust files in the aho-corasick repo whose paths contain the pattern src/error. Note that the ordering of these filters is not important. These two queries are equivalent:

repo:BurntSushi/aho-corasick path:src/error ErrorKind
path:src/error ErrorKind repo:BurntSushi/aho-corasick

bloop queries can also match against repo names or file paths.

repo:rus

will return all repos whose name contains the term rus (e.g. Rust), and

path:lint-docs

will return all files that contain the pattern lint-docs in their path.

Any query term can be a regex:

repo:/BurntSushi.*/ /^Copyright\s\(c\)/

will return files in any BurntSushi repo which match the regex /^Copyright\s\(c\)/.

Precedence

How does bloop know what to return when repo:, path: and content: queries are combined? Query terms have an order of precedence:

1. content/symbol
2. path
3. repo

A search will return the type associated with the highest precedence term in the query. For example:

repo:BurntSushi/aho-corasick path:src/error

will match file paths within the specific repo, whereas:

path:src/error ErrorKind

will match file content because the ErrorKind term takes precedence.