git-for-each-ref(1) — Linux manual page

NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | OPTIONS | FIELD NAMES | EXAMPLES | CAVEATS | NOTES | SEE ALSO | GIT | COLOPHON

GIT-FOR-EACH-REF(1)            Git Manual            GIT-FOR-EACH-REF(1)

NAME         top

       git-for-each-ref - Output information on each ref

SYNOPSIS         top

       git for-each-ref [--count=<count>] [--shell|--perl|--python|--tcl]
                          [(--sort=<key>)...] [--format=<format>]
                          [--include-root-refs] [ --stdin | <pattern>... ]
                          [--points-at=<object>]
                          [--merged[=<object>]] [--no-merged[=<object>]]
                          [--contains[=<object>]] [--no-contains[=<object>]]
                          [--exclude=<pattern> ...]

DESCRIPTION         top

       Iterate over all refs that match <pattern> and show them
       according to the given <format>, after sorting them according to
       the given set of <key>. If <count> is given, stop after showing
       that many refs. The interpolated values in <format> can
       optionally be quoted as string literals in the specified host
       language allowing their direct evaluation in that language.

OPTIONS         top

       <pattern>...
           If one or more patterns are given, only refs are shown that
           match against at least one pattern, either using fnmatch(3)
           or literally, in the latter case matching completely or from
           the beginning up to a slash.

       --stdin
           If --stdin is supplied, then the list of patterns is read
           from standard input instead of from the argument list.

       --count=<count>
           By default the command shows all refs that match <pattern>.
           This option makes it stop after showing that many refs.

       --sort=<key>
           A field name to sort on. Prefix - to sort in descending order
           of the value. When unspecified, refname is used. You may use
           the --sort=<key> option multiple times, in which case the
           last key becomes the primary key.

       --format=<format>
           A string that interpolates %(fieldname) from a ref being
           shown and the object it points at. In addition, the string
           literal %% renders as % and %xx - where xx are hex digits -
           renders as the character with hex code xx. For example, %00
           interpolates to \0 (NUL), %09 to \t (TAB), and %0a to \n
           (LF).

           When unspecified, <format> defaults to %(objectname) SPC
           %(objecttype) TAB %(refname).

       --color[=<when>]
           Respect any colors specified in the --format option. The
           <when> field must be one of always, never, or auto (if <when>
           is absent, behave as if always was given).

       --shell, --perl, --python, --tcl
           If given, strings that substitute %(fieldname) placeholders
           are quoted as string literals suitable for the specified host
           language. This is meant to produce a scriptlet that can
           directly be `eval`ed.

       --points-at=<object>
           Only list refs which points at the given object.

       --merged[=<object>]
           Only list refs whose tips are reachable from the specified
           commit (HEAD if not specified).

       --no-merged[=<object>]
           Only list refs whose tips are not reachable from the
           specified commit (HEAD if not specified).

       --contains[=<object>]
           Only list refs which contain the specified commit (HEAD if
           not specified).

       --no-contains[=<object>]
           Only list refs which don’t contain the specified commit (HEAD
           if not specified).

       --ignore-case
           Sorting and filtering refs are case insensitive.

       --omit-empty
           Do not print a newline after formatted refs where the format
           expands to the empty string.

       --exclude=<pattern>
           If one or more patterns are given, only refs which do not
           match any excluded pattern(s) are shown. Matching is done
           using the same rules as <pattern> above.

       --include-root-refs
           List root refs (HEAD and pseudorefs) apart from regular refs.

FIELD NAMES         top

       Various values from structured fields in referenced objects can
       be used to interpolate into the resulting output, or as sort
       keys.

       For all objects, the following names can be used:

       refname
           The name of the ref (the part after $GIT_DIR/). For a
           non-ambiguous short name of the ref append :short. The option
           core.warnAmbiguousRefs is used to select the strict
           abbreviation mode. If lstrip=<N> (rstrip=<N>) is appended,
           strips <N> slash-separated path components from the front
           (back) of the refname (e.g.  %(refname:lstrip=2) turns
           refs/tags/foo into foo and %(refname:rstrip=2) turns
           refs/tags/foo into refs). If <N> is a negative number, strip
           as many path components as necessary from the specified end
           to leave -<N> path components (e.g.  %(refname:lstrip=-2)
           turns refs/tags/foo into tags/foo and %(refname:rstrip=-1)
           turns refs/tags/foo into refs). When the ref does not have
           enough components, the result becomes an empty string if
           stripping with positive <N>, or it becomes the full refname
           if stripping with negative <N>. Neither is an error.

           strip can be used as a synonym to lstrip.

       objecttype
           The type of the object (blob, tree, commit, tag).

       objectsize
           The size of the object (the same as git cat-file -s reports).
           Append :disk to get the size, in bytes, that the object takes
           up on disk. See the note about on-disk sizes in the CAVEATS
           section below.

       objectname
           The object name (aka SHA-1). For a non-ambiguous abbreviation
           of the object name append :short. For an abbreviation of the
           object name with desired length append :short=<length>, where
           the minimum length is MINIMUM_ABBREV. The length may be
           exceeded to ensure unique object names.

       deltabase
           This expands to the object name of the delta base for the
           given object, if it is stored as a delta. Otherwise it
           expands to the null object name (all zeroes).

       upstream
           The name of a local ref which can be considered “upstream”
           from the displayed ref. Respects :short, :lstrip and :rstrip
           in the same way as refname above. Additionally respects
           :track to show "[ahead N, behind M]" and :trackshort to show
           the terse version: ">" (ahead), "<" (behind), "<>" (ahead and
           behind), or "=" (in sync).  :track also prints "[gone]"
           whenever unknown upstream ref is encountered. Append
           :track,nobracket to show tracking information without
           brackets (i.e "ahead N, behind M").

           For any remote-tracking branch %(upstream),
           %(upstream:remotename) and %(upstream:remoteref) refer to the
           name of the remote and the name of the tracked remote ref,
           respectively. In other words, the remote-tracking branch can
           be updated explicitly and individually by using the refspec
           %(upstream:remoteref):%(upstream) to fetch from
           %(upstream:remotename).

           Has no effect if the ref does not have tracking information
           associated with it. All the options apart from nobracket are
           mutually exclusive, but if used together the last option is
           selected.

       push
           The name of a local ref which represents the @{push} location
           for the displayed ref. Respects :short, :lstrip, :rstrip,
           :track, :trackshort, :remotename, and :remoteref options as
           upstream does. Produces an empty string if no @{push} ref is
           configured.

       HEAD
           * if HEAD matches current ref (the checked out branch), ' '
           otherwise.

       color
           Change output color. Followed by :<colorname>, where color
           names are described under Values in the "CONFIGURATION FILE"
           section of git-config(1). For example, %(color:bold red).

       align
           Left-, middle-, or right-align the content between
           %(align:...) and %(end). The "align:" is followed by
           width=<width> and position=<position> in any order separated
           by a comma, where the <position> is either left, right or
           middle, default being left and <width> is the total length of
           the content with alignment. For brevity, the "width=" and/or
           "position=" prefixes may be omitted, and bare <width> and
           <position> used instead. For instance,
           %(align:<width>,<position>). If the contents length is more
           than the width then no alignment is performed. If used with
           --quote everything in between %(align:...) and %(end) is
           quoted, but if nested then only the topmost level performs
           quoting.

       if
           Used as %(if)...%(then)...%(end) or
           %(if)...%(then)...%(else)...%(end). If there is an atom with
           value or string literal after the %(if) then everything after
           the %(then) is printed, else if the %(else) atom is used,
           then everything after %(else) is printed. We ignore space
           when evaluating the string before %(then), this is useful
           when we use the %(HEAD) atom which prints either "*" or " "
           and we want to apply the if condition only on the HEAD ref.
           Append ":equals=<string>" or ":notequals=<string>" to compare
           the value between the %(if:...) and %(then) atoms with the
           given string.

       symref
           The ref which the given symbolic ref refers to. If not a
           symbolic ref, nothing is printed. Respects the :short,
           :lstrip and :rstrip options in the same way as refname above.

       signature
           The GPG signature of a commit.

       signature:grade
           Show "G" for a good (valid) signature, "B" for a bad
           signature, "U" for a good signature with unknown validity,
           "X" for a good signature that has expired, "Y" for a good
           signature made by an expired key, "R" for a good signature
           made by a revoked key, "E" if the signature cannot be checked
           (e.g. missing key) and "N" for no signature.

       signature:signer
           The signer of the GPG signature of a commit.

       signature:key
           The key of the GPG signature of a commit.

       signature:fingerprint
           The fingerprint of the GPG signature of a commit.

       signature:primarykeyfingerprint
           The primary key fingerprint of the GPG signature of a commit.

       signature:trustlevel
           The trust level of the GPG signature of a commit. Possible
           outputs are ultimate, fully, marginal, never and undefined.

       worktreepath
           The absolute path to the worktree in which the ref is checked
           out, if it is checked out in any linked worktree. Empty
           string otherwise.

       ahead-behind:<committish>
           Two integers, separated by a space, demonstrating the number
           of commits ahead and behind, respectively, when comparing the
           output ref to the <committish> specified in the format.

       describe[:options]
           A human-readable name, like git-describe(1); empty string for
           undescribable commits. The describe string may be followed by
           a colon and one or more comma-separated options.

           tags=<bool-value>
               Instead of only considering annotated tags, consider
               lightweight tags as well; see the corresponding option in
               git-describe(1) for details.

           abbrev=<number>
               Use at least <number> hexadecimal digits; see the
               corresponding option in git-describe(1) for details.

           match=<pattern>
               Only consider tags matching the given glob(7) pattern,
               excluding the "refs/tags/" prefix; see the corresponding
               option in git-describe(1) for details.

           exclude=<pattern>
               Do not consider tags matching the given glob(7) pattern,
               excluding the "refs/tags/" prefix; see the corresponding
               option in git-describe(1) for details.

       In addition to the above, for commit and tag objects, the header
       field names (tree, parent, object, type, and tag) can be used to
       specify the value in the header field. Fields tree and parent can
       also be used with modifier :short and :short=<length> just like
       objectname.

       For commit and tag objects, the special creatordate and creator
       fields will correspond to the appropriate date or name-email-date
       tuple from the committer or tagger fields depending on the object
       type. These are intended for working on a mix of annotated and
       lightweight tags.

       For tag objects, a fieldname prefixed with an asterisk (*)
       expands to the fieldname value of the peeled object, rather than
       that of the tag object itself.

       Fields that have name-email-date tuple as its value (author,
       committer, and tagger) can be suffixed with name, email, and date
       to extract the named component. For email fields (authoremail,
       committeremail and taggeremail), :trim can be appended to get the
       email without angle brackets, and :localpart to get the part
       before the @ symbol out of the trimmed email. In addition to
       these, the :mailmap option and the corresponding :mailmap,trim
       and :mailmap,localpart can be used (order does not matter) to get
       values of the name and email according to the .mailmap file or
       according to the file set in the mailmap.file or mailmap.blob
       configuration variable (see gitmailmap(5)).

       The raw data in an object is raw.

       raw:size
           The raw data size of the object.

       Note that --format=%(raw) can not be used with --python, --shell,
       --tcl, because such language may not support arbitrary binary
       data in their string variable type.

       The message in a commit or a tag object is contents, from which
       contents:<part> can be used to extract various parts out of:

       contents:size
           The size in bytes of the commit or tag message.

       contents:subject
           The first paragraph of the message, which typically is a
           single line, is taken as the "subject" of the commit or the
           tag message. Instead of contents:subject, field subject can
           also be used to obtain same results.  :sanitize can be
           appended to subject for subject line suitable for filename.

       contents:body
           The remainder of the commit or the tag message that follows
           the "subject".

       contents:signature
           The optional GPG signature of the tag.

       contents:lines=N
           The first N lines of the message.

       Additionally, the trailers as interpreted by
       git-interpret-trailers(1) are obtained as trailers[:options] (or
       by using the historical alias contents:trailers[:options]). For
       valid [:option] values see trailers section of git-log(1).

       For sorting purposes, fields with numeric values sort in numeric
       order (objectsize, authordate, committerdate, creatordate,
       taggerdate). All other fields are used to sort in their
       byte-value order.

       There is also an option to sort by versions, this can be done by
       using the fieldname version:refname or its alias v:refname.

       In any case, a field name that refers to a field inapplicable to
       the object referred by the ref does not cause an error. It
       returns an empty string instead.

       As a special case for the date-type fields, you may specify a
       format for the date by adding : followed by date format name (see
       the values the --date option to git-rev-list(1) takes). If this
       formatting is provided in a --sort key, references will be sorted
       according to the byte-value of the formatted string rather than
       the numeric value of the underlying timestamp.

       Some atoms like %(align) and %(if) always require a matching
       %(end). We call them "opening atoms" and sometimes denote them as
       %($open).

       When a scripting language specific quoting is in effect,
       everything between a top-level opening atom and its matching
       %(end) is evaluated according to the semantics of the opening
       atom and only its result from the top-level is quoted.

EXAMPLES         top

       An example directly producing formatted text. Show the most
       recent 3 tagged commits:

           #!/bin/sh

           git for-each-ref --count=3 --sort='-*authordate' \
           --format='From: %(*authorname) %(*authoremail)
           Subject: %(*subject)
           Date: %(*authordate)
           Ref: %(*refname)

           %(*body)
           ' 'refs/tags'

       A simple example showing the use of shell eval on the output,
       demonstrating the use of --shell. List the prefixes of all heads:

           #!/bin/sh

           git for-each-ref --shell --format="ref=%(refname)" refs/heads | \
           while read entry
           do
                   eval "$entry"
                   echo `dirname $ref`
           done

       A bit more elaborate report on tags, demonstrating that the
       format may be an entire script:

           #!/bin/sh

           fmt='
                   r=%(refname)
                   t=%(*objecttype)
                   T=${r#refs/tags/}

                   o=%(*objectname)
                   n=%(*authorname)
                   e=%(*authoremail)
                   s=%(*subject)
                   d=%(*authordate)
                   b=%(*body)

                   kind=Tag
                   if test "z$t" = z
                   then
                           # could be a lightweight tag
                           t=%(objecttype)
                           kind="Lightweight tag"
                           o=%(objectname)
                           n=%(authorname)
                           e=%(authoremail)
                           s=%(subject)
                           d=%(authordate)
                           b=%(body)
                   fi
                   echo "$kind $T points at a $t object $o"
                   if test "z$t" = zcommit
                   then
                           echo "The commit was authored by $n $e
           at $d, and titled

               $s

           Its message reads as:
           "
                           echo "$b" | sed -e "s/^/    /"
                           echo
                   fi
           '

           eval=`git for-each-ref --shell --format="$fmt" \
                   --sort='*objecttype' \
                   --sort=-taggerdate \
                   refs/tags`
           eval "$eval"

       An example to show the usage of
       %(if)...%(then)...%(else)...%(end). This prefixes the current
       branch with a star.

           git for-each-ref --format="%(if)%(HEAD)%(then)* %(else)  %(end)%(refname:short)" refs/heads/

       An example to show the usage of %(if)...%(then)...%(end). This
       prints the authorname, if present.

           git for-each-ref --format="%(refname)%(if)%(authorname)%(then) Authored by: %(authorname)%(end)"

CAVEATS         top

       Note that the sizes of objects on disk are reported accurately,
       but care should be taken in drawing conclusions about which refs
       or objects are responsible for disk usage. The size of a packed
       non-delta object may be much larger than the size of objects
       which delta against it, but the choice of which object is the
       base and which is the delta is arbitrary and is subject to change
       during a repack.

       Note also that multiple copies of an object may be present in the
       object database; in this case, it is undefined which copy’s size
       or delta base will be reported.

NOTES         top

       When combining multiple --contains and --no-contains filters,
       only references that contain at least one of the --contains
       commits and contain none of the --no-contains commits are shown.

       When combining multiple --merged and --no-merged filters, only
       references that are reachable from at least one of the --merged
       commits and from none of the --no-merged commits are shown.

SEE ALSO         top

       git-show-ref(1)

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 2024-06-14.  (At that time,
       the date of the most recent commit that was found in the
       repository was 2024-06-12.)  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 2.45.2.492.gd63586         2024-06-12            GIT-FOR-EACH-REF(1)

Pages that refer to this page: git(1)git-branch(1)git-config(1)git-ls-remote(1)git-show-ref(1)git-tag(1)