NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | OPTIONS | OUTPUT | EXAMPLE | 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 [-q|--quiet] [--verify] [--head] [-d|--dereference]
                    [-s|--hash[=<n>]] [--abbrev[=<n>]] [--tags]
                    [--heads] [--] [<pattern>...]
       git show-ref --exclude-existing[=<pattern>]

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.
       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.
       --tags, --heads
           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 SHA-1 hash, not the reference name. When combined
           with --dereference the dereferenced tag will still be shown after
           the SHA-1.
       --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.
       --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. When combined with --verify
           this can be used 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: <SHA-1 ID> <space> <reference name>.
           $ 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 format is:
       <SHA-1 ID>
           $ git show-ref --heads --hash
           2e3ba0114a1f52b47df29743d6915d056be13278
           185008ae97960c8d551adcd9e23565194651b5d1
           03adf42c988195b50e1a1935ba5fcbc39b2b029b
           ...

EXAMPLE         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 exists.
       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
       2017-07-05.  If you discover any rendering problems in this HTML ver‐
       sion 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 man‐
       ual page), send a mail to man-pages@man7.org
Git 2.9.2.277.g2949358           07/16/2016                  GIT-SHOW-REF(1)

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