Search in Bitbucket Cloud

To start searching in Bitbucket, select the search field in the upper-right corner of the top navigation bar, then enter either a single word or an entire phrase (in double quotes). 

The keyboard shortcut to start a search from anywhere in Bitbucket is "  /  ". Search terms can match the file path, filename, or any content within the file. 

Search results in Bitbucket are code aware, which means your search results are ranked so that function and type definitions will display before other results. You can also use operators or modifiers to help you to refine search results.

Search scopes

The scope of a search changes according to where you are searching from:

To search in public repositories that aren't associated to any accounts you have access to, go to that repository and search there.

File or path search

Files can be found just by searching their filename or parts of the path. Using the path in your search only supports exact matches of path segments, but you can search using parts of the filename without a modifier. See the examples in the table below.

Phrase queries

A phrase query can be used to find multiple words that appear in a specific order.

To search for a phrase, enclose the words in double quotes. For example, to find files with instances of the word  abstract  followed by the word  class  (or part of a word), your query would look like this. 

This query would also find instances such as " abstract(class ". 

 The same search query without the double quotes would return files that contain both  abstract and class  in any order.

Search operators

Search operators can be used to refine your search results:

• Operators must be in ALL CAPS.

• Operators cannot be used alone; they must be used with an accompanying search term.

• You cannot use AND in your search query; multiple search terms are implicitly combined. For example, a query for bitbucket jira means that only files that contain both bitbucket and cloud are matched. 

These are the search operators available: 

Examples of valid () and invalid () search syntax:

Search modifiers

Modifiers can be used to refine search results:

• Use a modifier in the form key:value. 

• You can combine multiple modifiers – see the section Use multiple modifiers below.

• Modifiers can be negated using the NOT operator – see the section search operators above.

These are the search modifiers available:

Path modifier

Code search can be restricted to only consider a particular path. For the purpose of search, file paths are split up into segments (parts separated by /) including directories and filenames. Matching is done on one or more segment and is case-insensitive. There is no partial matching within a segment.

Language and file extension modifiers

Code search can be restricted to only consider a particular language or a particular file extension. For some languages, adding a language criteria is equivalent to specifying the file extension. For example, lang:java is equivalent to ext:java. For other languages, multiple file extensions are mapped to a single language. For example, the .hs, .lhs and .hs-boot file extensions are used for the Haskell programming language, and will be matched when specifying lang:haskell.

Note that 'language' as used here is not related to the Language setting for a repository.

Click here to see all the languages recognized by code search...

Use multiple modifiers

You don't need to use an operator with modifiers because modifiers are implicitly combined depending on their type. When using multiple search modifiers in your search query:

• Search modifiers of the same kind are implicitly combined.

• Search modifiers of different kinds are implicitly combined. 

• Search modifiers apply to the entire search expression.

For example, here is a query that would find files with either the .js or the .jsx extension, that are in either repo A or repo B, and that contain the phrase "search-term".

Examples of valid () and invalid () search syntax:

Code search considerations

There are some things to consider regarding how searches are performed:

• Search uses the main branch in a repository.

• We index files smaller than 320 KB – you won't see search results from larger files.

• Wildcard searches (e.g. qu?ck buil*) are not supported.

• We strip the following characters from search terms: !"#$%&'()*+,/;:<=>?@[\]^`{|}~-  

• Regular expressions are not supported in queries.

• Case is not preserved (but search operators must be in ALL CAPS).

• Queries can have up to 9 expressions (i.e. combinations of terms and operators).

• Queries can be up to 250 characters in length.

• We make sure that you only see the code you have permission to view in search results.