1GIT-REV-PARSE(1) Git Manual GIT-REV-PARSE(1)
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6 git-rev-parse - Pick out and massage parameters
7
9 git rev-parse [ --option ] <args>...
10
12 Many git porcelainish commands take mixture of flags (i.e. parameters
13 that begin with a dash -) and parameters meant for the underlying git
14 rev-list command they use internally and flags and parameters for the
15 other commands they use downstream of git rev-list. This command is
16 used to distinguish between them.
17
19 --parseopt
20 Use git rev-parse in option parsing mode (see PARSEOPT section
21 below).
22 --keep-dashdash
24 Only meaningful in --parseopt mode. Tells the option parser to echo
25 out the first -- met instead of skipping it.
26 --stop-at-non-option
28 Only meaningful in --parseopt mode. Lets the option parser stop at
29 the first non-option argument. This can be used to parse
30 sub-commands that take options themselves.
31 --sq-quote
33 Use git rev-parse in shell quoting mode (see SQ-QUOTE section
34 below). In contrast to the --sq option below, this mode does only
35 quoting. Nothing else is done to command input.
36 --revs-only
38 Do not output flags and parameters not meant for git rev-list
39 command.
40 --no-revs
42 Do not output flags and parameters meant for git rev-list command.
43 --flags
45 Do not output non-flag parameters.
46 --no-flags
48 Do not output flag parameters.
49 --default <arg>
51 If there is no parameter given by the user, use <arg> instead.
52 --verify
54 The parameter given must be usable as a single, valid object name.
55 Otherwise barf and abort.
56 -q, --quiet
58 Only meaningful in --verify mode. Do not output an error message if
59 the first argument is not a valid object name; instead exit with
60 non-zero status silently.
61 --sq
63 Usually the output is made one line per flag and parameter. This
64 option makes output a single line, properly quoted for consumption
65 by shell. Useful when you expect your parameter to contain
66 whitespaces and newlines (e.g. when using pickaxe -S with git
67 diff-*). In contrast to the --sq-quote option, the command input is
68 still interpreted as usual.
69 --not
71 When showing object names, prefix them with ^ and strip ^ prefix
72 from the object names that already have one.
73 --symbolic
75 Usually the object names are output in SHA1 form (with possible ^
76 prefix); this option makes them output in a form as close to the
77 original input as possible.
78 --symbolic-full-name
80 This is similar to --symbolic, but it omits input that are not refs
81 (i.e. branch or tag names; or more explicitly disambiguating
82 "heads/master" form, when you want to name the "master" branch when
83 there is an unfortunately named tag "master"), and show them as
84 full refnames (e.g. "refs/heads/master").
85 --abbrev-ref[=(strict|loose)]
87 A non-ambiguous short name of the objects name. The option
88 core.warnAmbiguousRefs is used to select the strict abbreviation
89 mode.
90 --all
92 Show all refs found in refs/.
93 --branches[=pattern], --tags[=pattern], --remotes[=pattern]
95 Show all branches, tags, or remote-tracking branches, respectively
96 (i.e., refs found in refs/heads, refs/tags, or refs/remotes,
97 respectively).
98 If a pattern is given, only refs matching the given shell glob are
100 shown. If the pattern does not contain a globbing character (?, *,
101 or [), it is turned into a prefix match by appending /*.
102 --glob=pattern
104 Show all refs matching the shell glob pattern pattern. If the
105 pattern does not start with refs/, this is automatically prepended.
106 If the pattern does not contain a globbing character (?, *, or [),
107 it is turned into a prefix match by appending /*.
108 --show-toplevel
110 Show the absolute path of the top-level directory.
111 --show-prefix
113 When the command is invoked from a subdirectory, show the path of
114 the current directory relative to the top-level directory.
115 --show-cdup
117 When the command is invoked from a subdirectory, show the path of
118 the top-level directory relative to the current directory
119 (typically a sequence of "../", or an empty string).
120 --git-dir
122 Show $GIT_DIR if defined. Otherwise show the path to the .git
123 directory, relative to the current directory.
124 If $GIT_DIR is not defined and the current directory is not
126 detected to lie in a git repository or work tree print a message to
127 stderr and exit with nonzero status.
128 --is-inside-git-dir
130 When the current working directory is below the repository
131 directory print "true", otherwise "false".
132 --is-inside-work-tree
134 When the current working directory is inside the work tree of the
135 repository print "true", otherwise "false".
136 --is-bare-repository
138 When the repository is bare print "true", otherwise "false".
139 --local-env-vars
141 List the GIT_* environment variables that are local to the
142 repository (e.g. GIT_DIR or GIT_WORK_TREE, but not GIT_EDITOR).
143 Only the names of the variables are listed, not their value, even
144 if they are set.
145 --short, --short=number
147 Instead of outputting the full SHA1 values of object names try to
148 abbreviate them to a shorter unique name. When no length is
149 specified 7 is used. The minimum length is 4.
150 --since=datestring, --after=datestring
152 Parse the date string, and output the corresponding --max-age=
153 parameter for git rev-list.
154 --until=datestring, --before=datestring
156 Parse the date string, and output the corresponding --min-age=
157 parameter for git rev-list.
158 <args>...
160 Flags and parameters to be parsed.
161
163 A revision parameter typically, but not necessarily, names a commit
164 object. They use what is called an extended SHA1 syntax. Here are
165 various ways to spell object names. The ones listed near the end of
166 this list are to name trees and blobs contained in a commit.
167 · The full SHA1 object name (40-byte hexadecimal string), or a
169 substring of such that is unique within the repository. E.g.
170 dae86e1950b1277e545cee180551750029cfe735 and dae86e both name the
171 same commit object if there are no other object in your repository
172 whose object name starts with dae86e.
173 · An output from git describe; i.e. a closest tag, optionally
175 followed by a dash and a number of commits, followed by a dash, a
176 g, and an abbreviated object name.
177 · A symbolic ref name. E.g. master typically means the commit object
179 referenced by refs/heads/master. If you happen to have both
180 heads/master and tags/master, you can explicitly say heads/master
181 to tell git which one you mean. When ambiguous, a <name> is
182 disambiguated by taking the first match in the following rules:
183 1. if $GIT_DIR/<name> exists, that is what you mean (this is
185 usually useful only for HEAD, FETCH_HEAD, ORIG_HEAD and
186 MERGE_HEAD);
187 2. otherwise, refs/<name> if exists;
189 3. otherwise, refs/tags/<name> if exists;
191 4. otherwise, refs/heads/<name> if exists;
193 5. otherwise, refs/remotes/<name> if exists;
195 6. otherwise, refs/remotes/<name>/HEAD if exists.
197 HEAD names the commit your changes in the working tree is based
199 on. FETCH_HEAD records the branch you fetched from a remote
200 repository with your last git fetch invocation. ORIG_HEAD is
201 created by commands that moves your HEAD in a drastic way, to
202 record the position of the HEAD before their operation, so that
203 you can change the tip of the branch back to the state before
204 you ran them easily. MERGE_HEAD records the commit(s) you are
205 merging into your branch when you run git merge.
206 Note that any of the refs/* cases above may come either from
208 the $GIT_DIR/refs directory or from the $GIT_DIR/packed-refs
209 file.
210 · A ref followed by the suffix @ with a date specification enclosed
212 in a brace pair (e.g. {yesterday}, {1 month 2 weeks 3 days 1 hour
213 1 second ago} or {1979-02-26 18:30:00}) to specify the value of the
214 ref at a prior point in time. This suffix may only be used
215 immediately following a ref name and the ref must have an existing
216 log ($GIT_DIR/logs/<ref>). Note that this looks up the state of
217 your local ref at a given time; e.g., what was in your local master
218 branch last week. If you want to look at commits made during
219 certain times, see --since and --until.
220 · A ref followed by the suffix @ with an ordinal specification
222 enclosed in a brace pair (e.g. {1}, {15}) to specify the n-th
223 prior value of that ref. For example master@{1} is the immediate
224 prior value of master while master@{5} is the 5th prior value of
225 master. This suffix may only be used immediately following a ref
226 name and the ref must have an existing log ($GIT_DIR/logs/<ref>).
227 · You can use the @ construct with an empty ref part to get at a
229 reflog of the current branch. For example, if you are on the branch
230 blabla, then @{1} means the same as blabla@{1}.
231 · The special construct @{-<n>} means the <n>th branch checked out
233 before the current one.
234 · The suffix @{upstream} to a ref (short form ref@{u}) refers to the
236 branch the ref is set to build on top of. Missing ref defaults to
237 the current branch.
238 · A suffix ^ to a revision parameter (e.g. HEAD^) means the first
240 parent of that commit object. ^<n> means the <n>th parent (i.e.
241 rev^ is equivalent to rev^1). As a special rule, rev^0 means the
242 commit itself and is used when rev is the object name of a tag
243 object that refers to a commit object.
244 · A suffix ~<n> to a revision parameter means the commit object that
246 is the <n>th generation grand-parent of the named commit object,
247 following only the first parent. I.e. rev~3 is equivalent to rev^^^
248 which is equivalent to rev^1^1^1. See below for a illustration of
249 the usage of this form.
250 · A suffix ^ followed by an object type name enclosed in brace pair
252 (e.g. v0.99.8^{commit}) means the object could be a tag, and
253 dereference the tag recursively until an object of that type is
254 found or the object cannot be dereferenced anymore (in which case,
255 barf). rev^0 introduced earlier is a short-hand for rev^{commit}.
256 · A suffix ^ followed by an empty brace pair (e.g. v0.99.8^{}) means
258 the object could be a tag, and dereference the tag recursively
259 until a non-tag object is found.
260 · A suffix ^ to a revision parameter followed by a brace pair that
262 contains a text led by a slash (e.g. HEAD^{/fix nasty bug}): this
263 is the same as :/fix nasty bug syntax below except that it returns
264 the youngest matching commit which is reachable from the ref before
265 ^.
266 · A colon, followed by a slash, followed by a text (e.g. :/fix nasty
268 bug): this names a commit whose commit message matches the
269 specified regular expression. This name returns the youngest
270 matching commit which is reachable from any ref. If the commit
271 message starts with a !, you have to repeat that; the special
272 sequence :/!, followed by something else than ! is reserved for
273 now. The regular expression can match any part of the commit
274 message. To match messages starting with a string, one can use e.g.
275 :/^foo.
276 · A suffix : followed by a path (e.g. HEAD:README); this names the
278 blob or tree at the given path in the tree-ish object named by the
279 part before the colon. :path (with an empty part before the colon,
280 e.g. :README) is a special case of the syntax described next:
281 content recorded in the index at the given path. A path starting
282 with ./ or ../ is relative to current working directory. The given
283 path will be converted to be relative to working tree’s root
284 directory. This is most useful to address a blob or tree from a
285 commit or tree that has the same tree structure with the working
286 tree.
287 · A colon, optionally followed by a stage number (0 to 3) and a
289 colon, followed by a path (e.g. :0:README); this names a blob
290 object in the index at the given path. Missing stage number (and
291 the colon that follows it, e.g. :README) names a stage 0 entry.
292 During a merge, stage 1 is the common ancestor, stage 2 is the
293 target branch’s version (typically the current branch), and stage 3
294 is the version from the branch being merged.
295 Here is an illustration, by Jon Loeliger. Both commit nodes B and C are
297 parents of commit node A. Parent commits are ordered left-to-right.
298 G H I J
300 \ / \ /
301 D E F
302 \ | / \
303 \ | / |
304 \|/ |
305 B C
306 \ /
307 \ /
308 A
309 A = = A^0
311 B = A^ = A^1 = A~1
312 C = A^2 = A^2
313 D = A^^ = A^1^1 = A~2
314 E = B^2 = A^^2
315 F = B^3 = A^^3
316 G = A^^^ = A^1^1^1 = A~3
317 H = D^2 = B^^2 = A^^^2 = A~2^2
318 I = F^ = B^3^ = A^^3^
319 J = F^2 = B^3^2 = A^^3^2
320
322 History traversing commands such as git log operate on a set of
323 commits, not just a single commit. To these commands, specifying a
324 single revision with the notation described in the previous section
325 means the set of commits reachable from that commit, following the
326 commit ancestry chain.
327 To exclude commits reachable from a commit, a prefix ^ notation is
329 used. E.g. ^r1 r2 means commits reachable from r2 but exclude the ones
330 reachable from r1.
331 This set operation appears so often that there is a shorthand for it.
333 When you have two commits r1 and r2 (named according to the syntax
334 explained in SPECIFYING REVISIONS above), you can ask for commits that
335 are reachable from r2 excluding those that are reachable from r1 by ^r1
336 r2 and it can be written as r1..r2.
337 A similar notation r1...r2 is called symmetric difference of r1 and r2
339 and is defined as r1 r2 --not $(git merge-base --all r1 r2). It is the
340 set of commits that are reachable from either one of r1 or r2 but not
341 from both.
342 Two other shorthands for naming a set that is formed by a commit and
344 its parent commits exist. The r1^@ notation means all parents of r1.
345 r1^! includes commit r1 but excludes all of its parents.
346 Here are a handful of examples:
348 D G H D
350 D F G H I J D F
351 ^G D H D
352 ^D B E I J F B
353 B...C G H D E B C
354 ^D B C E I J F B C
355 C^@ I J F
356 F^! D G H D F
357
359 In --parseopt mode, git rev-parse helps massaging options to bring to
360 shell scripts the same facilities C builtins have. It works as an
361 option normalizer (e.g. splits single switches aggregate values), a bit
362 like getopt(1) does.
363 It takes on the standard input the specification of the options to
365 parse and understand, and echoes on the standard output a string
366 suitable for sh(1) eval to replace the arguments with normalized ones.
367 In case of error, it outputs usage on the standard error stream, and
368 exits with code 129.
369 Note: Make sure you quote the result when passing it to eval. See below
371 for an example.
372 Input Format
374 git rev-parse --parseopt input format is fully text based. It has two
375 parts, separated by a line that contains only --. The lines before the
376 separator (should be more than one) are used for the usage. The lines
377 after the separator describe the options.
378 Each line of options has this format:
380 <opt_spec><flags>* SP+ help LF
382 <opt_spec>
385 its format is the short option character, then the long option name
386 separated by a comma. Both parts are not required, though at least
387 one is necessary. h,help, dry-run and f are all three correct
388 <opt_spec>.
389 <flags>
391 <flags> are of *, =, ? or !.
393 · Use = if the option takes an argument.
395 · Use ? to mean that the option is optional (though its use is
397 discouraged).
398 · Use * to mean that this option should not be listed in the
400 usage generated for the -h argument. It’s shown for --help-all
401 as documented in gitcli(7).
402 · Use ! to not make the corresponding negated long option
404 available.
405 The remainder of the line, after stripping the spaces, is used as the
407 help associated to the option.
408 Blank lines are ignored, and lines that don’t match this specification
410 are used as option group headers (start the line with a space to create
411 such lines on purpose).
412 Example
414 OPTS_SPEC="\
415 some-command [options] <args>...
416 some-command does foo and bar!
418 --
419 h,help show the help
420 foo some nifty option --foo
422 bar= some cool option --bar with an argument
423 An option group Header
425 C? option C with an optional argument"
426 eval "$(echo "$OPTS_SPEC" | git rev-parse --parseopt -- "$@" || echo exit $?)"
428
431 In --sq-quote mode, git rev-parse echoes on the standard output a
432 single line suitable for sh(1) eval. This line is made by normalizing
433 the arguments following --sq-quote. Nothing other than quoting the
434 arguments is done.
435 If you want command input to still be interpreted as usual by git
437 rev-parse before the output is shell quoted, see the --sq option.
438 Example
440 $ cat >your-git-script.sh <<\EOF
441 #!/bin/sh
442 args=$(git rev-parse --sq-quote "$@") # quote user-supplied arguments
443 command="git frotz -n24 $args" # and use it inside a handcrafted
444 # command line
445 eval "$command"
446 EOF
447 $ sh your-git-script.sh "a b'c"
449
452 · Print the object name of the current commit:
453 $ git rev-parse --verify HEAD
455 · Print the commit object name from the revision in the $REV shell
458 variable:
459 $ git rev-parse --verify $REV
461 This will error out if $REV is empty or not a valid revision.
463 · Same as above:
465 $ git rev-parse --default master --verify $REV
467 but if $REV is empty, the commit object name from master will be
469 printed.
470
472 Written by Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org[1]> . Junio C Hamano
473 <gitster@pobox.com[2]> and Pierre Habouzit <madcoder@debian.org[3]>
474
476 Documentation by Junio C Hamano and the git-list
477 <git@vger.kernel.org[4]>.
478
480 Part of the git(1) suite
481
483 1. torvalds@osdl.org
484 mailto:torvalds@osdl.org
485 2. gitster@pobox.com
487 mailto:gitster@pobox.com
488 3. madcoder@debian.org
490 mailto:madcoder@debian.org
491 4. git@vger.kernel.org
493 mailto:git@vger.kernel.org
494Git 1.7.4.4 04/11/2011 GIT-REV-PARSE(1)