View a file in a different Git branch without changing branches

Question

Is it possible to open a file in a git branch without checking out that branch  How   Essentially I want to be able to open a file in my github pages branch without switching branches all the time  I don t want to modify it  just want to view it

User · Answer

Add the following to your    gitconfig file   alias    cat     git show    1  2        And then try this  git cat BRANCHNAME FILEPATH   Personally I prefer separate parameters without a colon  Why  This choice mirrors the parameters of the checkout command  which I tend to use rather frequently and I find it thus much easier to remember than the bizarro colon-separated parameter of the show command

User · Answer

This should work   git show branch file   Where branch can be any ref  branch  tag  HEAD       and file is the full path of the file  To export it you could use  git show branch file  gt  exported file   You should also look at VonC s answers to some related questions    How to retrieve a single file from specific revision in Git  How to get just one file from another branch   UPDATE 2015-01-19   Nowadays you can use relative paths with git show a1b35   file txt

User · Answer

A simple  newbie friendly way for looking into a file   git gui browser  lt branch gt  which lets you explore the contents of any file   It s also there in the File menu of git gui  Most other -more advanced- GUI wrappers  Qgit  Egit  etc    offer browsing opening files as well

User · Answer

If you re using Emacs  you can type C-x v   to see a different revision of the file you re currently editing  tags  branches and hashes all work

User · Answer

git show somebranch path to your file   you can also do multiple files and have them concatenated   git show branchA 10 fileA branchB   fileB   You do not have to provide the full path to the file  relative paths are acceptable e g    git show branchA 10    src hello c   If you want to get the file in the local directory  revert just one file  you can checkout   git checkout somebranch    -- path to file

[git] View a file in a different Git branch without changing branches

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