git-rev-parse(1) — Linux manual page

NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | OPTIONS | SPECIFYING REVISIONS | SPECIFYING RANGES | REVISION RANGE SUMMARY | PARSEOPT | SQ-QUOTE | EXAMPLES | GIT | COLOPHON

GIT-REV-PARSE(1)               Git Manual               GIT-REV-PARSE(1)

NAME         top

       git-rev-parse - Pick out and massage parameters

SYNOPSIS         top

       git rev-parse [<options>] <args>...

DESCRIPTION         top

       Many Git porcelainish commands take a mixture of flags (i.e.
       parameters that begin with a dash -) and parameters meant for the
       underlying git rev-list command they use internally and flags and
       parameters for the other commands they use downstream of git
       rev-list. This command is used to distinguish between them.

OPTIONS         top

   Operation Modes
       Each of these options must appear first on the command line.

       --parseopt
           Use git rev-parse in option parsing mode (see PARSEOPT
           section below).

       --sq-quote
           Use git rev-parse in shell quoting mode (see SQ-QUOTE section
           below). In contrast to the --sq option below, this mode only
           does quoting. Nothing else is done to command input.

   Options for --parseopt
       --keep-dashdash
           Only meaningful in --parseopt mode. Tells the option parser
           to echo out the first -- met instead of skipping it.

       --stop-at-non-option
           Only meaningful in --parseopt mode. Lets the option parser
           stop at the first non-option argument. This can be used to
           parse sub-commands that take options themselves.

       --stuck-long
           Only meaningful in --parseopt mode. Output the options in
           their long form if available, and with their arguments stuck.

   Options for Filtering
       --revs-only
           Do not output flags and parameters not meant for git rev-list
           command.

       --no-revs
           Do not output flags and parameters meant for git rev-list
           command.

       --flags
           Do not output non-flag parameters.

       --no-flags
           Do not output flag parameters.

   Options for Output
       --default <arg>
           If there is no parameter given by the user, use <arg>
           instead.

       --prefix <arg>
           Behave as if git rev-parse was invoked from the <arg>
           subdirectory of the working tree. Any relative filenames are
           resolved as if they are prefixed by <arg> and will be printed
           in that form.

           This can be used to convert arguments to a command run in a
           subdirectory so that they can still be used after moving to
           the top-level of the repository. For example:

               prefix=$(git rev-parse --show-prefix)
               cd "$(git rev-parse --show-toplevel)"
               # rev-parse provides the -- needed for 'set'
               eval "set $(git rev-parse --sq --prefix "$prefix" -- "$@")"

       --verify
           Verify that exactly one parameter is provided, and that it
           can be turned into a raw 20-byte SHA-1 that can be used to
           access the object database. If so, emit it to the standard
           output; otherwise, error out.

           If you want to make sure that the output actually names an
           object in your object database and/or can be used as a
           specific type of object you require, you can add the ^{type}
           peeling operator to the parameter. For example, git rev-parse
           "$VAR^{commit}" will make sure $VAR names an existing object
           that is a commit-ish (i.e. a commit, or an annotated tag that
           points at a commit). To make sure that $VAR names an existing
           object of any type, git rev-parse "$VAR^{object}" can be
           used.

           Note that if you are verifying a name from an untrusted
           source, it is wise to use --end-of-options so that the name
           argument is not mistaken for another option.

       -q, --quiet
           Only meaningful in --verify mode. Do not output an error
           message if the first argument is not a valid object name;
           instead exit with non-zero status silently. SHA-1s for valid
           object names are printed to stdout on success.

       --sq
           Usually the output is made one line per flag and parameter.
           This option makes output a single line, properly quoted for
           consumption by shell. Useful when you expect your parameter
           to contain whitespaces and newlines (e.g. when using pickaxe
           -S with git diff-*). In contrast to the --sq-quote option,
           the command input is still interpreted as usual.

       --short[=length]
           Same as --verify but shortens the object name to a unique
           prefix with at least length characters. The minimum length is
           4, the default is the effective value of the core.abbrev
           configuration variable (see git-config(1)).

       --not
           When showing object names, prefix them with ^ and strip ^
           prefix from the object names that already have one.

       --abbrev-ref[=(strict|loose)]
           A non-ambiguous short name of the objects name. The option
           core.warnAmbiguousRefs is used to select the strict
           abbreviation mode.

       --symbolic
           Usually the object names are output in SHA-1 form (with
           possible ^ prefix); this option makes them output in a form
           as close to the original input as possible.

       --symbolic-full-name
           This is similar to --symbolic, but it omits input that are
           not refs (i.e. branch or tag names; or more explicitly
           disambiguating "heads/master" form, when you want to name the
           "master" branch when there is an unfortunately named tag
           "master"), and shows them as full refnames (e.g.
           "refs/heads/master").

   Options for Objects
       --all
           Show all refs found in refs/.

       --branches[=pattern], --tags[=pattern], --remotes[=pattern]
           Show all branches, tags, or remote-tracking branches,
           respectively (i.e., refs found in refs/heads, refs/tags, or
           refs/remotes, respectively).

           If a pattern is given, only refs matching the given shell
           glob are shown. If the pattern does not contain a globbing
           character (?, *, or [), it is turned into a prefix match by
           appending /*.

       --glob=pattern
           Show all refs matching the shell glob pattern pattern. If the
           pattern does not start with refs/, this is automatically
           prepended. If the pattern does not contain a globbing
           character (?, *, or [), it is turned into a prefix match by
           appending /*.

       --exclude=<glob-pattern>
           Do not include refs matching <glob-pattern> that the next
           --all, --branches, --tags, --remotes, or --glob would
           otherwise consider. Repetitions of this option accumulate
           exclusion patterns up to the next --all, --branches, --tags,
           --remotes, or --glob option (other options or arguments do
           not clear accumulated patterns).

           The patterns given should not begin with refs/heads,
           refs/tags, or refs/remotes when applied to --branches,
           --tags, or --remotes, respectively, and they must begin with
           refs/ when applied to --glob or --all. If a trailing /* is
           intended, it must be given explicitly.

       --exclude-hidden=[fetch|receive|uploadpack]
           Do not include refs that would be hidden by git-fetch,
           git-receive-pack or git-upload-pack by consulting the
           appropriate fetch.hideRefs, receive.hideRefs or
           uploadpack.hideRefs configuration along with
           transfer.hideRefs (see git-config(1)). This option affects
           the next pseudo-ref option --all or --glob and is cleared
           after processing them.

       --disambiguate=<prefix>
           Show every object whose name begins with the given prefix.
           The <prefix> must be at least 4 hexadecimal digits long to
           avoid listing each and every object in the repository by
           mistake.

   Options for Files
       --local-env-vars
           List the GIT_* environment variables that are local to the
           repository (e.g. GIT_DIR or GIT_WORK_TREE, but not
           GIT_EDITOR). Only the names of the variables are listed, not
           their value, even if they are set.

       --path-format=(absolute|relative)
           Controls the behavior of certain other options. If specified
           as absolute, the paths printed by those options will be
           absolute and canonical. If specified as relative, the paths
           will be relative to the current working directory if that is
           possible. The default is option specific.

           This option may be specified multiple times and affects only
           the arguments that follow it on the command line, either to
           the end of the command line or the next instance of this
           option.

       The following options are modified by --path-format:

       --git-dir
           Show $GIT_DIR if defined. Otherwise show the path to the .git
           directory. The path shown, when relative, is relative to the
           current working directory.

           If $GIT_DIR is not defined and the current directory is not
           detected to lie in a Git repository or work tree print a
           message to stderr and exit with nonzero status.

       --git-common-dir
           Show $GIT_COMMON_DIR if defined, else $GIT_DIR.

       --resolve-git-dir <path>
           Check if <path> is a valid repository or a gitfile that
           points at a valid repository, and print the location of the
           repository. If <path> is a gitfile then the resolved path to
           the real repository is printed.

       --git-path <path>
           Resolve "$GIT_DIR/<path>" and takes other path relocation
           variables such as $GIT_OBJECT_DIRECTORY, $GIT_INDEX_FILE...
           into account. For example, if $GIT_OBJECT_DIRECTORY is set to
           /foo/bar then "git rev-parse --git-path objects/abc" returns
           /foo/bar/abc.

       --show-toplevel
           Show the (by default, absolute) path of the top-level
           directory of the working tree. If there is no working tree,
           report an error.

       --show-superproject-working-tree
           Show the absolute path of the root of the superproject’s
           working tree (if exists) that uses the current repository as
           its submodule. Outputs nothing if the current repository is
           not used as a submodule by any project.

       --shared-index-path
           Show the path to the shared index file in split index mode,
           or empty if not in split-index mode.

       The following options are unaffected by --path-format:

       --absolute-git-dir
           Like --git-dir, but its output is always the canonicalized
           absolute path.

       --is-inside-git-dir
           When the current working directory is below the repository
           directory print "true", otherwise "false".

       --is-inside-work-tree
           When the current working directory is inside the work tree of
           the repository print "true", otherwise "false".

       --is-bare-repository
           When the repository is bare print "true", otherwise "false".

       --is-shallow-repository
           When the repository is shallow print "true", otherwise
           "false".

       --show-cdup
           When the command is invoked from a subdirectory, show the
           path of the top-level directory relative to the current
           directory (typically a sequence of "../", or an empty
           string).

       --show-prefix
           When the command is invoked from a subdirectory, show the
           path of the current directory relative to the top-level
           directory.

       --show-object-format[=(storage|input|output)]
           Show the object format (hash algorithm) used for the
           repository for storage inside the .git directory, input, or
           output. For input, multiple algorithms may be printed,
           space-separated. If not specified, the default is "storage".

   Other Options
       --since=datestring, --after=datestring
           Parse the date string, and output the corresponding
           --max-age= parameter for git rev-list.

       --until=datestring, --before=datestring
           Parse the date string, and output the corresponding
           --min-age= parameter for git rev-list.

       <args>...
           Flags and parameters to be parsed.

SPECIFYING REVISIONS         top

       A revision parameter <rev> typically, but not necessarily, names
       a commit object. It uses what is called an extended SHA-1 syntax.
       Here are various ways to spell object names. The ones listed near
       the end of this list name trees and blobs contained in a commit.

           Note

           This document shows the "raw" syntax as seen by git. The
           shell and other UIs might require additional quoting to
           protect special characters and to avoid word splitting.

       <sha1>, e.g. dae86e1950b1277e545cee180551750029cfe735, dae86e
           The full SHA-1 object name (40-byte hexadecimal string), or a
           leading substring that is unique within the repository. E.g.
           dae86e1950b1277e545cee180551750029cfe735 and dae86e both name
           the same commit object if there is no other object in your
           repository whose object name starts with dae86e.

       <describeOutput>, e.g. v1.7.4.2-679-g3bee7fb
           Output from git describe; i.e. a closest tag, optionally
           followed by a dash and a number of commits, followed by a
           dash, a g, and an abbreviated object name.

       <refname>, e.g. master, heads/master, refs/heads/master
           A symbolic ref name. E.g.  master typically means the commit
           object referenced by refs/heads/master. If you happen to have
           both heads/master and tags/master, you can explicitly say
           heads/master to tell Git which one you mean. When ambiguous,
           a <refname> is disambiguated by taking the first match in the
           following rules:

            1. If $GIT_DIR/<refname> exists, that is what you mean (this
               is usually useful only for HEAD, FETCH_HEAD, ORIG_HEAD,
               MERGE_HEAD, REBASE_HEAD, REVERT_HEAD, CHERRY_PICK_HEAD,
               BISECT_HEAD and AUTO_MERGE);

            2. otherwise, refs/<refname> if it exists;

            3. otherwise, refs/tags/<refname> if it exists;

            4. otherwise, refs/heads/<refname> if it exists;

            5. otherwise, refs/remotes/<refname> if it exists;

            6. otherwise, refs/remotes/<refname>/HEAD if it exists.

           HEAD
               names the commit on which you based the changes in the
               working tree.

           FETCH_HEAD
               records the branch which you fetched from a remote
               repository with your last git fetch invocation.

           ORIG_HEAD
               is created by commands that move your HEAD in a drastic
               way (git am, git merge, git rebase, git reset), to record
               the position of the HEAD before their operation, so that
               you can easily change the tip of the branch back to the
               state before you ran them.

           MERGE_HEAD
               records the commit(s) which you are merging into your
               branch when you run git merge.

           REBASE_HEAD
               during a rebase, records the commit at which the
               operation is currently stopped, either because of
               conflicts or an edit command in an interactive rebase.

           REVERT_HEAD
               records the commit which you are reverting when you run
               git revert.

           CHERRY_PICK_HEAD
               records the commit which you are cherry-picking when you
               run git cherry-pick.

           BISECT_HEAD
               records the current commit to be tested when you run git
               bisect --no-checkout.

           AUTO_MERGE
               records a tree object corresponding to the state the ort
               merge strategy wrote to the working tree when a merge
               operation resulted in conflicts.

           Note that any of the refs/* cases above may come either from
           the $GIT_DIR/refs directory or from the $GIT_DIR/packed-refs
           file. While the ref name encoding is unspecified, UTF-8 is
           preferred as some output processing may assume ref names in
           UTF-8.

       @
           @ alone is a shortcut for HEAD.

       [<refname>]@{<date>}, e.g. master@{yesterday}, HEAD@{5 minutes
       ago}
           A ref followed by the suffix @ with a date specification
           enclosed in a brace pair (e.g.  {yesterday}, {1 month 2 weeks
           3 days 1 hour 1 second ago} or {1979-02-26 18:30:00})
           specifies the value of the ref at a prior point in time. This
           suffix may only be used immediately following a ref name and
           the ref must have an existing log ($GIT_DIR/logs/<ref>). Note
           that this looks up the state of your local ref at a given
           time; e.g., what was in your local master branch last week.
           If you want to look at commits made during certain times, see
           --since and --until.

       <refname>@{<n>}, e.g. master@{1}
           A ref followed by the suffix @ with an ordinal specification
           enclosed in a brace pair (e.g.  {1}, {15}) specifies the n-th
           prior value of that ref. For example master@{1} is the
           immediate prior value of master while master@{5} is the 5th
           prior value of master. This suffix may only be used
           immediately following a ref name and the ref must have an
           existing log ($GIT_DIR/logs/<refname>).

       @{<n>}, e.g. @{1}
           You can use the @ construct with an empty ref part to get at
           a reflog entry of the current branch. For example, if you are
           on branch blabla then @{1} means the same as blabla@{1}.

       @{-<n>}, e.g. @{-1}
           The construct @{-<n>} means the <n>th branch/commit checked
           out before the current one.

       [<branchname>]@{upstream}, e.g. master@{upstream}, @{u}
           A branch B may be set up to build on top of a branch X
           (configured with branch.<name>.merge) at a remote R
           (configured with the branch X taken from remote R, typically
           found at refs/remotes/R/X.

       [<branchname>]@{push}, e.g. master@{push}, @{push}
           The suffix @{push} reports the branch "where we would push
           to" if git push were run while branchname was checked out (or
           the current HEAD if no branchname is specified). Like for
           @{upstream}, we report the remote-tracking branch that
           corresponds to that branch at the remote.

           Here’s an example to make it more clear:

               $ git config push.default current
               $ git config remote.pushdefault myfork
               $ git switch -c mybranch origin/master

               $ git rev-parse --symbolic-full-name @{upstream}
               refs/remotes/origin/master

               $ git rev-parse --symbolic-full-name @{push}
               refs/remotes/myfork/mybranch

           Note in the example that we set up a triangular workflow,
           where we pull from one location and push to another. In a
           non-triangular workflow, @{push} is the same as @{upstream},
           and there is no need for it.

           This suffix is also accepted when spelled in uppercase, and
           means the same thing no matter the case.

       <rev>^[<n>], e.g. HEAD^, v1.5.1^0
           A suffix ^ to a revision parameter means the first parent of
           that commit object.  ^<n> means the <n>th parent (i.e.
           <rev>^ is equivalent to <rev>^1). As a special rule, <rev>^0
           means the commit itself and is used when <rev> is the object
           name of a tag object that refers to a commit object.

       <rev>~[<n>], e.g. HEAD~, master~3
           A suffix ~ to a revision parameter means the first parent of
           that commit object. A suffix ~<n> to a revision parameter
           means the commit object that is the <n>th generation ancestor
           of the named commit object, following only the first parents.
           I.e.  <rev>~3 is equivalent to <rev>^^^ which is equivalent
           to <rev>^1^1^1. See below for an illustration of the usage of
           this form.

       <rev>^{<type>}, e.g. v0.99.8^{commit}
           A suffix ^ followed by an object type name enclosed in brace
           pair means dereference the object at <rev> recursively until
           an object of type <type> is found or the object cannot be
           dereferenced anymore (in which case, barf). For example, if
           <rev> is a commit-ish, <rev>^{commit} describes the
           corresponding commit object. Similarly, if <rev> is a
           tree-ish, <rev>^{tree} describes the corresponding tree
           object.  <rev>^0 is a short-hand for <rev>^{commit}.

           <rev>^{object} can be used to make sure <rev> names an object
           that exists, without requiring <rev> to be a tag, and without
           dereferencing <rev>; because a tag is already an object, it
           does not have to be dereferenced even once to get to an
           object.

           <rev>^{tag} can be used to ensure that <rev> identifies an
           existing tag object.

       <rev>^{}, e.g. v0.99.8^{}
           A suffix ^ followed by an empty brace pair means the object
           could be a tag, and dereference the tag recursively until a
           non-tag object is found.

       <rev>^{/<text>}, e.g. HEAD^{/fix nasty bug}
           A suffix ^ to a revision parameter, followed by a brace pair
           that contains a text led by a slash, is the same as the :/fix
           nasty bug syntax below except that it returns the youngest
           matching commit which is reachable from the <rev> before ^.

       :/<text>, e.g. :/fix nasty bug
           A colon, followed by a slash, followed by a text, names a
           commit whose commit message matches the specified regular
           expression. This name returns the youngest matching commit
           which is reachable from any ref, including HEAD. The regular
           expression can match any part of the commit message. To match
           messages starting with a string, one can use e.g.  :/^foo.
           The special sequence :/!  is reserved for modifiers to what
           is matched.  :/!-foo performs a negative match, while :/!!foo
           matches a literal !  character, followed by foo. Any other
           sequence beginning with :/!  is reserved for now. Depending
           on the given text, the shell’s word splitting rules might
           require additional quoting.

       <rev>:<path>, e.g. HEAD:README, master:./README
           A suffix : followed by a path names the blob or tree at the
           given path in the tree-ish object named by the part before
           the colon. A path starting with ./ or ../ is relative to the
           current working directory. The given path will be converted
           to be relative to the working tree’s root directory. This is
           most useful to address a blob or tree from a commit or tree
           that has the same tree structure as the working tree.

       :[<n>:]<path>, e.g. :0:README, :README
           A colon, optionally followed by a stage number (0 to 3) and a
           colon, followed by a path, names a blob object in the index
           at the given path. A missing stage number (and the colon that
           follows it) names a stage 0 entry. During a merge, stage 1 is
           the common ancestor, stage 2 is the target branch’s version
           (typically the current branch), and stage 3 is the version
           from the branch which is being merged.

       Here is an illustration, by Jon Loeliger. Both commit nodes B and
       C are parents of commit node A. Parent commits are ordered
       left-to-right.

           G   H   I   J
            \ /     \ /
             D   E   F
              \  |  / \
               \ | /   |
                \|/    |
                 B     C
                  \   /
                   \ /
                    A

           A =      = A^0
           B = A^   = A^1     = A~1
           C =      = A^2
           D = A^^  = A^1^1   = A~2
           E = B^2  = A^^2
           F = B^3  = A^^3
           G = A^^^ = A^1^1^1 = A~3
           H = D^2  = B^^2    = A^^^2  = A~2^2
           I = F^   = B^3^    = A^^3^
           J = F^2  = B^3^2   = A^^3^2

SPECIFYING RANGES         top

       History traversing commands such as git log operate on a set of
       commits, not just a single commit.

       For these commands, specifying a single revision, using the
       notation described in the previous section, means the set of
       commits reachable from the given commit.

       Specifying several revisions means the set of commits reachable
       from any of the given commits.

       A commit’s reachable set is the commit itself and the commits in
       its ancestry chain.

       There are several notations to specify a set of connected commits
       (called a "revision range"), illustrated below.

   Commit Exclusions
       ^<rev> (caret) Notation
           To exclude commits reachable from a commit, a prefix ^
           notation is used. E.g.  ^r1 r2 means commits reachable from
           r2 but exclude the ones reachable from r1 (i.e.  r1 and its
           ancestors).

   Dotted Range Notations
       The .. (two-dot) Range Notation
           The ^r1 r2 set operation appears so often that there is a
           shorthand for it. When you have two commits r1 and r2 (named
           according to the syntax explained in SPECIFYING REVISIONS
           above), you can ask for commits that are reachable from r2
           excluding those that are reachable from r1 by ^r1 r2 and it
           can be written as r1..r2.

       The ... (three-dot) Symmetric Difference Notation
           A similar notation r1...r2 is called symmetric difference of
           r1 and r2 and is defined as r1 r2 --not $(git merge-base
           --all r1 r2). It is the set of commits that are reachable
           from either one of r1 (left side) or r2 (right side) but not
           from both.

       In these two shorthand notations, you can omit one end and let it
       default to HEAD. For example, origin.. is a shorthand for
       origin..HEAD and asks "What did I do since I forked from the
       origin branch?" Similarly, ..origin is a shorthand for
       HEAD..origin and asks "What did the origin do since I forked from
       them?" Note that .. would mean HEAD..HEAD which is an empty range
       that is both reachable and unreachable from HEAD.

       Commands that are specifically designed to take two distinct
       ranges (e.g. "git range-diff R1 R2" to compare two ranges) do
       exist, but they are exceptions. Unless otherwise noted, all "git"
       commands that operate on a set of commits work on a single
       revision range. In other words, writing two "two-dot range
       notation" next to each other, e.g.

           $ git log A..B C..D

       does not specify two revision ranges for most commands. Instead
       it will name a single connected set of commits, i.e. those that
       are reachable from either B or D but are reachable from neither A
       or C. In a linear history like this:

           ---A---B---o---o---C---D

       because A and B are reachable from C, the revision range
       specified by these two dotted ranges is a single commit D.

   Other <rev>^ Parent Shorthand Notations
       Three other shorthands exist, particularly useful for merge
       commits, for naming a set that is formed by a commit and its
       parent commits.

       The r1^@ notation means all parents of r1.

       The r1^! notation includes commit r1 but excludes all of its
       parents. By itself, this notation denotes the single commit r1.

       The <rev>^-[<n>] notation includes <rev> but excludes the <n>th
       parent (i.e. a shorthand for <rev>^<n>..<rev>), with <n> = 1 if
       not given. This is typically useful for merge commits where you
       can just pass <commit>^- to get all the commits in the branch
       that was merged in merge commit <commit> (including <commit>
       itself).

       While <rev>^<n> was about specifying a single commit parent,
       these three notations also consider its parents. For example you
       can say HEAD^2^@, however you cannot say HEAD^@^2.

REVISION RANGE SUMMARY         top

       <rev>
           Include commits that are reachable from <rev> (i.e. <rev> and
           its ancestors).

       ^<rev>
           Exclude commits that are reachable from <rev> (i.e. <rev> and
           its ancestors).

       <rev1>..<rev2>
           Include commits that are reachable from <rev2> but exclude
           those that are reachable from <rev1>. When either <rev1> or
           <rev2> is omitted, it defaults to HEAD.

       <rev1>...<rev2>
           Include commits that are reachable from either <rev1> or
           <rev2> but exclude those that are reachable from both. When
           either <rev1> or <rev2> is omitted, it defaults to HEAD.

       <rev>^@, e.g. HEAD^@
           A suffix ^ followed by an at sign is the same as listing all
           parents of <rev> (meaning, include anything reachable from
           its parents, but not the commit itself).

       <rev>^!, e.g. HEAD^!
           A suffix ^ followed by an exclamation mark is the same as
           giving commit <rev> and all its parents prefixed with ^ to
           exclude them (and their ancestors).

       <rev>^-<n>, e.g. HEAD^-, HEAD^-2
           Equivalent to <rev>^<n>..<rev>, with <n> = 1 if not given.

       Here are a handful of examples using the Loeliger illustration
       above, with each step in the notation’s expansion and selection
       carefully spelt out:

              Args   Expanded arguments    Selected commits
              D                            G H D
              D F                          G H I J D F
              ^G D                         H D
              ^D B                         E I J F B
              ^D B C                       E I J F B C
              C                            I J F C
              B..C   = ^B C                C
              B...C  = B ^F C              G H D E B C
              B^-    = B^..B
                     = ^B^1 B              E I J F B
              C^@    = C^1
                     = F                   I J F
              B^@    = B^1 B^2 B^3
                     = D E F               D G H E F I J
              C^!    = C ^C^@
                     = C ^C^1
                     = C ^F                C
              B^!    = B ^B^@
                     = B ^B^1 ^B^2 ^B^3
                     = B ^D ^E ^F          B
              F^! D  = F ^I ^J D           G H D F

PARSEOPT         top

       In --parseopt mode, git rev-parse helps massaging options to
       bring to shell scripts the same facilities C builtins have. It
       works as an option normalizer (e.g. splits single switches
       aggregate values), a bit like getopt(1) does.

       It takes on the standard input the specification of the options
       to parse and understand, and echoes on the standard output a
       string suitable for sh(1) eval to replace the arguments with
       normalized ones. In case of error, it outputs usage on the
       standard error stream, and exits with code 129.

       Note: Make sure you quote the result when passing it to eval. See
       below for an example.

   Input Format
       git rev-parse --parseopt input format is fully text based. It has
       two parts, separated by a line that contains only --. The lines
       before the separator (should be one or more) are used for the
       usage. The lines after the separator describe the options.

       Each line of options has this format:

           <opt-spec><flags>*<arg-hint>? SP+ help LF

       <opt-spec>
           its format is the short option character, then the long
           option name separated by a comma. Both parts are not
           required, though at least one is necessary. May not contain
           any of the <flags> characters.  h,help, dry-run and f are
           examples of correct <opt-spec>.

       <flags>
           <flags> are of *, =, ?  or !.

           •   Use = if the option takes an argument.

           •   Use ?  to mean that the option takes an optional
               argument. You probably want to use the --stuck-long mode
               to be able to unambiguously parse the optional argument.

           •   Use * to mean that this option should not be listed in
               the usage generated for the -h argument. It’s shown for
               --help-all as documented in gitcli(7).

           •   Use !  to not make the corresponding negated long option
               available.

       <arg-hint>
           <arg-hint>, if specified, is used as a name of the argument
           in the help output, for options that take arguments.
           <arg-hint> is terminated by the first whitespace. It is
           customary to use a dash to separate words in a multi-word
           argument hint.

       The remainder of the line, after stripping the spaces, is used as
       the help associated with the option.

       Blank lines are ignored, and lines that don’t match this
       specification are used as option group headers (start the line
       with a space to create such lines on purpose).

   Example
           OPTS_SPEC="\
           some-command [<options>] <args>...

           some-command does foo and bar!
           --
           h,help!   show the help

           foo       some nifty option --foo
           bar=      some cool option --bar with an argument
           baz=arg   another cool option --baz with a named argument
           qux?path  qux may take a path argument but has meaning by itself

             An option group Header
           C?        option C with an optional argument"

           eval "$(echo "$OPTS_SPEC" | git rev-parse --parseopt -- "$@" || echo exit $?)"

   Usage text
       When "$@" is -h or --help in the above example, the following
       usage text would be shown:

           usage: some-command [<options>] <args>...

               some-command does foo and bar!

               -h, --help            show the help
               --[no-]foo            some nifty option --foo
               --[no-]bar ...        some cool option --bar with an argument
               --[no-]baz <arg>      another cool option --baz with a named argument
               --[no-]qux[=<path>]   qux may take a path argument but has meaning by itself

           An option group Header
               -C[...]               option C with an optional argument

SQ-QUOTE         top

       In --sq-quote mode, git rev-parse echoes on the standard output a
       single line suitable for sh(1) eval. This line is made by
       normalizing the arguments following --sq-quote. Nothing other
       than quoting the arguments is done.

       If you want command input to still be interpreted as usual by git
       rev-parse before the output is shell quoted, see the --sq option.

   Example
           $ cat >your-git-script.sh <<\EOF
           #!/bin/sh
           args=$(git rev-parse --sq-quote "$@")   # quote user-supplied arguments
           command="git frotz -n24 $args"          # and use it inside a handcrafted
                                                   # command line
           eval "$command"
           EOF

           $ sh your-git-script.sh "a b'c"

EXAMPLES         top

       •   Print the object name of the current commit:

               $ git rev-parse --verify HEAD

       •   Print the commit object name from the revision in the $REV
           shell variable:

               $ git rev-parse --verify --end-of-options $REV^{commit}

           This will error out if $REV is empty or not a valid revision.

       •   Similar to above:

               $ git rev-parse --default master --verify --end-of-options $REV

           but if $REV is empty, the commit object name from master will
           be printed.

GIT         top

       Part of the git(1) suite

COLOPHON         top

       This page is part of the git (Git distributed version control
       system) project.  Information about the project can be found at
       ⟨http:https://git-scm.com/⟩.  If you have a bug report for this manual
       page, see ⟨http:https://git-scm.com/community⟩.  This page was obtained
       from the project's upstream Git repository
       ⟨https://github.com/git/git.git⟩ on 2023-12-22.  (At that time,
       the date of the most recent commit that was found in the
       repository was 2023-12-20.)  If you discover any rendering
       problems in this HTML version of the page, or you believe there
       is a better or more up-to-date source for the page, or you have
       corrections or improvements to the information in this COLOPHON
       (which is not part of the original manual page), send a mail to
       [email protected]

Git 2.43.0.174.g055bb6         2023-12-20               GIT-REV-PARSE(1)

Pages that refer to this page: git(1)git-cat-file(1)git-config(1)git-fsck(1)git-send-pack(1)git-worktree(1)stg(1)gitrevisions(7)