Re: Colorize matches for git log --grep=pattern?

From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date: Nov 1, 2017, 18:50 UTC
Message-ID: <20171101185026.d4ljyywz3fepgoth@sigill.intra.peff.net>
In-Reply-To: <otc9a3$h9a$1@blaine.gmane.org>

On Wed, Nov 01, 2017 at 11:57:14AM +0100, Sebastian Schuberth wrote:

Show 5 quoted lines

> is there a way to colorize / highlight the pattern matched by
> 
>     git log -E -i --grep=pattern
> 
> in the console output?

I don't think so. The grep code _does_ know about colorizing matches (which is why "git grep --color" works), but for the output code path for commit messages doesn't use grep at all (it couldn't, because we're not just showing the relevant lines but selecting the whole commit).

So I think it would have to be reimplemented separately.

The best workaround I could come up with is passing the output through a highlighting script:

  git log --grep=foo --color |
  perl -pe 's/foo/\x1b[1;31m$&\x1b[m/' |
  less

Pretty hacky.

-Peff