How do I search git history for a disappeared line?

Question

I need to search the history of a specific file in a git repository to find a line that is gone. The commit message will not have any relevant text to search on. What comm

Answer 1

How about git log --stat | grep 'filename' to begin narrowing it down?

Answer 2

This is a job for the pickaxe!

From the git-log manpage:

-S<string>

Look for differences that introduce or remove an instance of <string>. Note that this is different than the string simply appearing in diff output; see the pickaxe entry in gitdiffcore(7) for more details.

You can of course use further options to narrow it down, for example:

git log -Sfoobar --since=2008.1.1 --until=2009.1.1 -- path_containing_change

Isn't that awesomely useful?