How to tell if a file is git tracked by shell exit code

Question

Is there a way to tell if a file is being tracked by running some git command and checking its exit code   In other words  is git tracking a file

User · Answer

I don t know of any git command that gives a  bad  exit code  but it seems like an easy way to do it would be to use a git command that gives no output for a file that isn t tracked  such as git-log or git-ls-files   That way you don t really have to do any parsing  you can run it through another simple utility like grep to see if there was any output   For example      git-ls-files test file c   grep     will exit with a zero code if the file is tracked  but a exit code of one if the file is not tracked

User · Answer

If you don t want to clutter up your console with error messages  you can also run  git ls-files file name   and then check the result  If git returns nothing  then the file is not tracked  If it s tracked  git will return the file path   This comes in handy if you want to combine it in a script  for example PowerShell    gitResult    git ls-files       out-string if   gitResult length -ne 0           do stuff with the tracked file

User · Answer

try   git ls-files --error-unmatch  lt file name gt    will exit with 1 if file is not tracked

User · Answer

I suggest a custom alias on you  gitconfig     You have to way to do   1  With git command   git config --global alias check-file  lt command gt    2  Editing    gitconfig and add this line on alias section    alias      check-file     f     if      -eq 0    then echo  Filename missing    else tracked   git ls-files   1    if    -z   tracked      then echo  File not tracked   else echo  File tracked   fi  fi       f    Once launched command  1  or saved file  2   on your workspace you can test it     git check-file   Filename missing     git check-file README md   File tracked     git check-file foo   File not tracked

User · Answer

EDIT  If you need to use git from bash there is --porcelain option to git status      --porcelain      Give the output in a stable  easy-to-parse format for   scripts  Currently this is identical   to --short output  but is guaranteed   not to change in the future  making it   safe for scripts    Output looks like this    gt  git status --porcelain  M starthudson sh    bla   Or if you do only one file at a time    gt  git status --porcelain bla    bla     ORIGINAL  do   git status   You will see report stating which files were updated and which ones are untracked   You can see bla sh is tracked and modified and newbla is not tracked     On branch master   Changed but not updated       use  git add  lt file gt      to update what will be committed            modified    bla sh     Untracked files       use  git add  lt file gt      to include in what will be committed            newbla no changes added to commit  use  git add  and or  git commit -a

User · Answer

Just my two cents   git ls-files   grep -x relative path  where relative path can be easily determined by pressing tab within an auto-completion shell  Add an additional   wc -l  to get a 1 or 0 output

User · Answer

Try running git status on the file   It will print an error if it s not tracked by git  PS  gt  git status foo txt error  pathspec  foo txt  did not match any file s  known to git

User · Answer

using git log will give info about this  If the file is tracked in git the command shows some results logs   Else it is empty   For example if the file is git tracked   root user-ubuntu   project-repo-directory  git log src    somefile js commit ad9180b772d5c64dcd79a6cbb9487bd2ef08cbfc Author  User  lt someone somedomain com gt  Date    Mon Feb 20 07 45 04 2017 -0600      fix eslint indentation errors             If the file is not git tracked   root user-ubuntu   project-repo-directory  git log src    somefile js root user-ubuntu   project-repo-directory

[git] How to tell if a file is git tracked (by shell exit code)?

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