[git] Add line break to 'git commit -m' from the command line

I am using Git from the command line and am trying to add a line break to the commit message (using git commit -m "") without going into Vim.

Is this possible?

If you just want, say, a head line and a content line, you can use:

git commit -m "My head line" -m "My content line."

Note that this creates separate paragraphs - not lines. So there will be a blank line between each two -m lines, e.g.:

My head line

My content line.

Using Git from the command line with Bash you can do the following:

git commit -m "this is
> a line
> with new lines
> maybe"

Simply type and press Enter when you want a new line, the ">" symbol means that you have pressed Enter, and there is a new line. Other answers work also.

You should be able to use

git commit -m $'first line\nsecond line'

From the Bash manual:

Words of the form $'string' are treated specially. The word expands to string, with backslash-escaped characters replaced as specified by the ANSI C standard.

This includes support for newlines as shown above, plus hex and Unicode codes and others. Go to the linked section to see a list of the backslash-escaped characters.

Adding line breaks to your Git commit

Try the following to create a multi-line commit message:

git commit -m "Demonstrate multi-line commit message in Powershell" -m "Add a title to your commit after -m enclosed in quotes,
then add the body of your comment after a second -m.
Press ENTER before closing the quotes to add a line break.
Repeat as needed.
Then close the quotes and hit ENTER twice to apply the commit."

Then verify what you've done:

git log -1

You should end up with something like this:

The screenshot is from an example I set up using PowerShell with Poshgit.

Doing something like

git commit -m"test\ntest"

doesn't work, but something like

git commit -m"$(echo -e "test\ntest")"

works, but it's not very pretty. You set up a git-commitlb command in your PATH which does something like this:

#!/bin/bash

message=$1

git commit -m"$(echo -e "$message")"

And use it like this:

git commitlb "line1\nline2\nline3"

Word of warning, I have a feeling that the general convention is to have a summary line as the first line, and then two line breaks, and then an extended message in the commit message, so doing something like this would break that convention. You could of course do:

git commitlb "line1\n\nline2\nline3"

From Git documentation:

-m <msg>
--message=<msg>
Use the given <msg> as the commit message. If multiple -m options are given, their values are concatenated as separate paragraphs.

So, if you are looking for grouping multiple commit messages this should do the work:

git commit -m "commit message1" -m "commit message2"

I hope this isn't leading too far away from the posted question, but setting the default editor and then using

git commit -e

might be much more comfortable.

There is no need complicating the stuff. After the -m "text... the next line is gotten by pressing Enter. When Enter is pressed > appears. When you are done, just put " and press Enter:

$ git commit -m "Another way of demonstrating multicommit messages:
>
> This is a new line written
> This is another new line written
> This one is really awesome too and we can continue doing so till ..."

$ git log -1
commit 5474e383f2eda610be6211d8697ed1503400ee42 (HEAD -> test2)
Author: ************** <*********@gmail.com>
Date:   Mon Oct 9 13:30:26 2017 +0200

Another way of demonstrating multicommit messages:

This is a new line written
This is another new line written
This one is really awesome too and we can continue doing so till ...

In Bash/Zsh you can simply use literal line breaks inside quotes:

git commit -m 'Multi-line
commit
message'

ANSI-C quoting also works in Bash/Zsh:

git commit -m $'Multi-line\ncommit\nmessage'

You can also instruct Git to use an editor of your choice to edit the commit message. From the docs on git-commit:

The editor used to edit the commit log message will be chosen from the GIT_EDITOR environment variable, the core.editor configuration variable, the VISUAL environment variable, or the EDITOR environment variable (in that order). See git-var for details.

So to edit your message using nano, for example, you can run:

export GIT_EDITOR=nano
git commit

I use zsh on a Mac, and I can post multi-line commit messages within double quotes ("). Basically I keep typing and pressing return for new lines, but the message isn't sent to Git until I close the quotes and return.

If you are using Bash, hit C-x C-e (Ctrl+x Ctrl+e), and it will open the current command in your preferred editor.

You can change the preferred editor by tweaking VISUAL and EDITOR.

That's what I have in my .bashrc:

export ALTERNATE_EDITOR=''
export EDITOR='emacsclient -t'
export VISUAL='emacsclient -c'
export SUDO_EDITOR='emacsclient -t'

Personally, I find it easiest to modify commit messages after the fact in vi (or whatever your git editor of choice is) rather than on the command line, by doing git commit --amend right after git commit.

Here is a list of failing solutions on Windows with standard cmd.exe shell (to save you some trial-and-error time!):

• git commit -m 'Hello Enter doesn't work: it won't ask for a new line

• git commit -m "Hello Enter idem

• git commit -m "Hello^ Enter idem

• git commit -m 'Hello^ Enter World' looks like working because it asks "More?" and allows to write a new line, but finally when doing git log you will see that it's still a one-line message...

TL;DR: Even if on Windows, commandline parsing works differently, and ^ allows multiline input, it doesn't help here.

Finally git commit -e is probably the best option.

I don't see anyone mentioning that if you don't provide a message it will open nano for you (at least in Linux) where you can write multiple lines...

Only this is needed:

git commit

Sadly, git doesn't seem to allow for any newline character in its message. There are various reasonable solutions already above, but when scripting, those are annoying. Here documents also work, but may also a bit too annoying to deal with (think yaml files)

Here is what I did:

git commit \
    --message "Subject" \
    --message "First line$(echo)Second line$(echo)Third Line"

While this is also still ugly, it allows for 'one-liners' which may be useful still. As usually the strings are variables or combined with variables, the uglynes may be kept to a minimum.

IMO the initial commit message line is supposed to be to short, to the point instead of paragraph. So using git commit -m "<short_message>" will suffice

After that in order to expand upon the initial commit message we can use

git commit --amend

which will open the vim and then we can enter the explanation for the commit message which in my opinion easier than command line.