[git] Show just the current branch in Git

I tried looking for a special Git command for this, but I couldn't find one. Is there anything shorter or faster than the following?

git branch | awk '/\*/ { print $2; }'

With Git 2.22 (Q2 2019), you will have a simpler approach: git branch --show-current.

See commit 0ecb1fc (25 Oct 2018) by Daniels Umanovskis (umanovskis).
^{(Merged by Junio C Hamano -- gitster -- in commit 3710f60, 07 Mar 2019)}

branch: introduce --show-current display option

When called with --show-current, git branch will print the current branch name and terminate.
Only the actual name gets printed, without refs/heads.
In detached HEAD state, nothing is output.

Intended both for scripting and interactive/informative use.
Unlike git branch --list, no filtering is needed to just get the branch name.

See the original discussion on the Git mailing list in Oct. 2018, and the actual pathc.

Someone might find this (git show-branch --current) helpful. The current branch is shown with a * mark.

host-78-65-229-191:idp-mobileid user-1$ git show-branch --current
! [CICD-1283-pipeline-in-shared-libraries] feat(CICD-1283): Use latest version of custom release plugin.
 * [master] Merge pull request #12 in CORES/idp-mobileid from feature/fix-schema-name to master
--
+  [CICD-1283-pipeline-in-shared-libraries] feat(CICD-1283): Use latest version of custom release plugin.
+  [CICD-1283-pipeline-in-shared-libraries^] feat(CICD-1283): Used the renamed AWS pipeline.
+  [CICD-1283-pipeline-in-shared-libraries~2] feat(CICD-1283): Point to feature branches of shared libraries.
-- [master] Merge pull request #12 in CORES/idp-mobileid from feature/fix-schema-name to master

I guess this should be quick and can be used with a Python API:

git branch --contains HEAD
* master

In Git 1.8.1 you can use the git symbolic-ref command with the "--short" option:

$ git symbolic-ref HEAD
refs/heads/develop
$ git symbolic-ref --short HEAD
develop

From what I can tell, there is no way to natively show just the current branch in Git, so I have been using:

git branch | grep '*'

For completeness, echo $(__git_ps1), on Linux at least, should give you the name of the current branch surrounded by parentheses.

This may be useful is some scenarios as it is not a Git command (while depending on Git), notably for setting up your Bash command prompt to display the current branch.

For example:

/mnt/c/git/ConsoleApp1 (test-branch)> echo $(__git_ps1)
(test-branch)
/mnt/c/git/ConsoleApp1 (test-branch)> git checkout master
Switched to branch 'master'
/mnt/c/git/ConsoleApp1 (master)> echo $(__git_ps1)
(master)
/mnt/c/git/ConsoleApp1 (master)> cd ..
/mnt/c/git> echo $(__git_ps1)

/mnt/c/git>

You may be interested in the output of

git symbolic-ref HEAD

In particular, depending on your needs and layout you may wish to do

basename $(git symbolic-ref HEAD)

or

git symbolic-ref HEAD | cut -d/ -f3-

and then again there is the .git/HEAD file which may also be of interest for you.

I'm using

/etc/bash_completion.d/git

It came with Git and provides a prompt with branch name and argument completion.

This is not shorter, but it deals with detached branches as well:

git branch | awk -v FS=' ' '/\*/{print $NF}' | sed 's|[()]||g'