git-show-ref(1) — Linux manual page

NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | OPTIONS | OUTPUT | EXAMPLES | FILES | SEE ALSO | GIT | COLOPHON

GIT-SHOW-REF(1)                Git Manual                GIT-SHOW-REF(1)

NAME         top

       git-show-ref - List references in a local repository

SYNOPSIS         top

       git show-ref [--head] [-d | --dereference]
                    [-s | --hash[=<n>]] [--abbrev[=<n>]] [--tags]
                    [--heads] [--] [<pattern>...]
       git show-ref --verify [-q | --quiet] [-d | --dereference]
                    [-s | --hash[=<n>]] [--abbrev[=<n>]]
                    [--] [<ref>...]
       git show-ref --exclude-existing[=<pattern>]
       git show-ref --exists <ref>

DESCRIPTION         top

       Displays references available in a local repository along with
       the associated commit IDs. Results can be filtered using a
       pattern and tags can be dereferenced into object IDs.
       Additionally, it can be used to test whether a particular ref
       exists.

       By default, shows the tags, heads, and remote refs.

       The --exclude-existing form is a filter that does the inverse. It
       reads refs from stdin, one ref per line, and shows those that
       don’t exist in the local repository.

       The --exists form can be used to check for the existence of a
       single references. This form does not verify whether the
       reference resolves to an actual object.

       Use of this utility is encouraged in favor of directly accessing
       files under the .git directory.

OPTIONS         top

       --head
           Show the HEAD reference, even if it would normally be
           filtered out.

       --heads, --tags
           Limit to "refs/heads" and "refs/tags", respectively. These
           options are not mutually exclusive; when given both,
           references stored in "refs/heads" and "refs/tags" are
           displayed.

       -d, --dereference
           Dereference tags into object IDs as well. They will be shown
           with ^{} appended.

       -s, --hash[=<n>]
           Only show the OID, not the reference name. When combined with
           --dereference, the dereferenced tag will still be shown after
           the OID.

       --verify
           Enable stricter reference checking by requiring an exact ref
           path. Aside from returning an error code of 1, it will also
           print an error message if --quiet was not specified.

       --exists
           Check whether the given reference exists. Returns an exit
           code of 0 if it does, 2 if it is missing, and 1 in case
           looking up the reference failed with an error other than the
           reference being missing.

       --abbrev[=<n>]
           Abbreviate the object name. When using --hash, you do not
           have to say --hash --abbrev; --hash=n would do.

       -q, --quiet
           Do not print any results to stdout. Can be used with --verify
           to silently check if a reference exists.

       --exclude-existing[=<pattern>]
           Make git show-ref act as a filter that reads refs from stdin
           of the form ^(?:<anything>\s)?<refname>(?:\^{})?$ and
           performs the following actions on each: (1) strip ^{} at the
           end of line if any; (2) ignore if pattern is provided and
           does not head-match refname; (3) warn if refname is not a
           well-formed refname and skip; (4) ignore if refname is a ref
           that exists in the local repository; (5) otherwise output the
           line.

       <pattern>...
           Show references matching one or more patterns. Patterns are
           matched from the end of the full name, and only complete
           parts are matched, e.g.  master matches refs/heads/master,
           refs/remotes/origin/master, refs/tags/jedi/master but not
           refs/heads/mymaster or refs/remotes/master/jedi.

OUTPUT         top

       The output is in the format:

           <oid> SP <ref> LF

       For example,

           $ git show-ref --head --dereference
           832e76a9899f560a90ffd62ae2ce83bbeff58f54 HEAD
           832e76a9899f560a90ffd62ae2ce83bbeff58f54 refs/heads/master
           832e76a9899f560a90ffd62ae2ce83bbeff58f54 refs/heads/origin
           3521017556c5de4159da4615a39fa4d5d2c279b5 refs/tags/v0.99.9c
           6ddc0964034342519a87fe013781abf31c6db6ad refs/tags/v0.99.9c^{}
           055e4ae3ae6eb344cbabf2a5256a49ea66040131 refs/tags/v1.0rc4
           423325a2d24638ddcc82ce47be5e40be550f4507 refs/tags/v1.0rc4^{}
           ...

       When using --hash (and not --dereference), the output is in the
       format:

           <oid> LF

       For example,

           $ git show-ref --heads --hash
           2e3ba0114a1f52b47df29743d6915d056be13278
           185008ae97960c8d551adcd9e23565194651b5d1
           03adf42c988195b50e1a1935ba5fcbc39b2b029b
           ...

EXAMPLES         top

       To show all references called "master", whether tags or heads or
       anything else, and regardless of how deep in the reference naming
       hierarchy they are, use:

                   git show-ref master

       This will show "refs/heads/master" but also
       "refs/remote/other-repo/master", if such references exist.

       When using the --verify flag, the command requires an exact path:

                   git show-ref --verify refs/heads/master

       will only match the exact branch called "master".

       If nothing matches, git show-ref will return an error code of 1,
       and in the case of verification, it will show an error message.

       For scripting, you can ask it to be quiet with the --quiet flag,
       which allows you to do things like

                   git show-ref --quiet --verify -- "refs/heads/$headname" ||
                           echo "$headname is not a valid branch"

       to check whether a particular branch exists or not (notice how we
       don’t actually want to show any results, and we want to use the
       full refname for it in order to not trigger the problem with
       ambiguous partial matches).

       To show only tags, or only proper branch heads, use --tags and/or
       --heads respectively (using both means that it shows tags and
       heads, but not other random references under the refs/
       subdirectory).

       To do automatic tag object dereferencing, use the -d or
       --dereference flag, so you can do

                   git show-ref --tags --dereference

       to get a listing of all tags together with what they dereference.

FILES         top

       .git/refs/*, .git/packed-refs

SEE ALSO         top

       git-for-each-ref(1), git-ls-remote(1), git-update-ref(1),
       gitrepository-layout(5)

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://git-scm.com/⟩.  If you have a bug report for this manual
       page, see ⟨http://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
       man-pages@man7.org

Git 2.43.0.174.g055bb6         2023-12-20                GIT-SHOW-REF(1)

Pages that refer to this page: git(1)git-for-each-ref(1)gitformat-bundle(5)