gh-search - Man Page

Search for repositories, issues, and pull requests

Synopsis

gh search <command> [flags]

Description

Search across all of GitHub.

Excluding search results that match a qualifier

In a browser, the GitHub search syntax supports excluding results that match a search qualifier by prefixing the qualifier with a hyphen. For example, to search for issues that do not have the label "bug", you would use -label:bug as a search qualifier.

gh supports this syntax in gh search as well, but it requires extra command line arguments to avoid the hyphen being interpreted as a command line flag because it begins with a hyphen.

On Unix-like systems, you can use the -- argument to indicate that the arguments that follow are not a flag, but rather a query string. For example:

$ gh search issues -- "my-search-query -label:bug"

On PowerShell, you must use both the --% argument and the -- argument to produce the same effect. For example:

$ gh --% search issues -- "my search query -label:bug"

See the following for more information: - GitHub search syntax:  ⟨https://docs.github.com/en/search-github/getting-started-with-searching-on-github/understanding-the-search-syntax#exclude-results-that-match-a-qualifier⟩ - The PowerShell stop parse flag --%:  ⟨https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/module/microsoft.powershell.core/about/about_parsing?view=powershell-7.5#the-stop-parsing-token⟩ - The Unix-like -- argument:  ⟨https://www.gnu.org/software/bash/manual/bash.html#Shell-Builtin-Commands-1

Available Commands

gh-search-code(1)

Search within code

gh-search-commits(1)

Search for commits

gh-search-issues(1)

Search for issues

gh-search-prs(1)

Search for pull requests

gh-search-repos(1)

Search for repositories

Exit Codes

0: Successful execution

1: Error

2: Command canceled

4: Authentication required

NOTE: Specific commands may have additional exit codes. Refer to the command's help for more information.

See Also

gh(1)

Referenced By

gh(1), gh-search-code(1), gh-search-commits(1), gh-search-issues(1), gh-search-prs(1), gh-search-repos(1).

Sep 2025 GitHub CLI manual