GitHub announced improvements to its Code Finder feature to help developers find the content they need.

GitHub code lookup

The team says developers can try it out at https://cs.github.com once Tech Preview has been enabled for your account. The search index covers over five million of the most popular public repositories, and you can search for private repositories that you have access to.

Some of the new features:

• Easily find what you’re looking for in the top results, with smart ranking and a code-optimized index.
• Search for an exact string, with support for substring matches and special characters, or use regular expressions (enclosed in / separators).
• Expand your searches with org: or repo: qualifiers, with autocomplete suggestions in the search box.
• Refine your results using filters such as language :, path :, extension: and Boolean operators (OR, NOT). Finding definitions of a symbol with symbol:.
• Get your bearings quickly with additional features, such as directory tree, symbol information for the active scope, jump to definition, select to search, etc.

Documentation on search syntax is available here and FAQs are here. Can you press? on any page to see the available keyboard shortcuts.