Is there a way to see all the versions of a file using git?

Question

I often have a need to find something I coded in an old version of script but I don't know when. I usually try to jump around in the log finding different versions and seeing if they have the change, or I just give up and try something else.

What would be particularly useful is a command that outputs every version of a file between two dates or hashes. Then an easy grep would find what I'm looking for.

It would probably work something like this:

git showeverything d612905a..b39af32e /path/to/file /tmp/output

Answer 1

git has the perfect tool for this: git log -S which will search for a change and only show those commits

# search changes in all branches which touch the string $abc in a file
git log -p -S'$abc' --all -- path/to/file