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determining which files are affected by a Git commit

Note

  • foobar represents the 40-character commit object name.

Use git diff-tree --no-commit-id --name-only -r foobar. This is the preferred way, because it's a plumbing command; meant to be programmatic. Alternatively, use git show --pretty="" --name-only foobar. This is less preferred for scripts, because it's a porcelain command; meant to be user-facing.

explanation

  • The --no-commit-id suppresses the commit ID output.
  • The --pretty argument specifies an empty format string to avoid the cruft at the beginning.
  • The --name-only argument shows only the file names that were affected.
  • The -r argument is to recurse into sub-trees.

licensing

Some rights reserved: CC BY-SA 3.0. Includes significant content from an answer on Stack Overflow by Ryan McGeary with changes made, including converting the original HTML to Markdown and the removal of “Thanks Hank”.