Why doesn't quick search in Server show all the matches?

Question

There's probably a switch for this somewhere, and I'm new at BitBucket, so I don't know where to find it. But...

We're trying to use the quick search to find particular terms within our large source code base. It seems that the search is finding some of the matches within each file, but not all of them. For example, if I do a query for:

project:DP repo:d2s_sw QueryNotFound

(QueryNotFound is a C++ error we throw)

I have a checked-in file that uses the object in a catch() statement four times, but only the first three show up. Why is that, and is there any way I can change it?

Thanks.

Harold Zable · Answer

Ah. Now I understand.

Yes, as you describe, when I mention "quick search", I'm referring to the results from using the search bar at the top of the screen. Also, when I hit enter and get the full list, the result does only show 3 results in a specific file when there are 4.

The "full search" with ctrl-F from within a source file does show all the cases. It's a little odd, though... when the "full search" finds the text, the lines that were found in the "quick search" have the highlighted line number on the left, but the lines that weren't found in the "quick search" don't.

I understand the difficulties of building a GUI like this. Is there some advantage to having the "quick search" only show some of the cases in each file, instead of all of them? I'm guessing it might be a performance issue. My user didn't expect this, and their first reaction was to ask:

"How reliable are BitBucket tools? I did this search on BitBucket:"

Like you, I want them to have a positive initial impression of the tool. If there was a switch that controlled this behavior, or a button that said "search for additional matches" or "search for additional matches in this file" in the results, it would be less surprising than what appeared to just be the wrong answer.

Anyways, thanks for your answer. I'll pass it along to my user.

--Harold Z.

Aaron · Answer

Hello Harold,

Welcome to the Atlassian Community!

When you mention quick search, are you referring to only what shows up in the search bar on the top of the screen? Or are you saying that when you hit enter and get the full list, the result only shows 3 results in a specific file when there are 4? If you are referring to the quick search (the results from the search bar alone) will only show a few options and there isn't any way to extend this without direct code base changes. If you are talking about the full search results, you can confirm that the "View all X results" on the drop-down for the file says one less and if you click on the file and just use Cmd/Cntrl + F you see one more result than what the search mentioned? The full search page should show everything where the quick search bar only will show a few at most.

Regards,
Aaron Levinson
Dev Tools Support Engineer