git show [options] <object>...
Shows one or more objects (blobs, trees, tags and commits).
For commits it shows the log message and textual diff. It also presents the merge commit in a special format as produced by git-diff-tree --cc.
For tags, it shows the tag message and the referenced objects.
For trees, it shows the names (equivalent to git-ls-tree with --name-only).
For plain blobs, it shows the plain contents.
The command takes options applicable to the git-diff-tree command to control how the changes the commit introduces are shown.
This manual page describes only the most frequently used options.
<object>...
--pretty[=<format>], --format[=<format>]
Note: you can specify the default pretty format in the repository configuration (see git-config(1)).
--abbrev-commit
This should make "--pretty=oneline" a whole lot more readable for people using 80-column terminals.
--oneline
--encoding[=<encoding>]
If the commit is a merge, and if the pretty-format is not oneline, email or raw, an additional line is inserted before the Author: line. This line begins with "Merge: " and the sha1s of ancestral commits are printed, separated by spaces. Note that the listed commits may not necessarily be the list of the direct parent commits if you have limited your view of history: for example, if you are only interested in changes related to a certain directory or file.
Here are some additional details for each format:
oneline
<sha1> <title line>
This is designed to be as compact as possible.
short
commit <sha1> Author: <author>
<title line>
medium
commit <sha1> Author: <author> Date: <author date>
<title line>
<full commit message>
full
commit <sha1> Author: <author> Commit: <committer>
<title line>
<full commit message>
fuller
commit <sha1> Author: <author> AuthorDate: <author date> Commit: <committer> CommitDate: <committer date>
<title line>
<full commit message>
From <sha1> <date> From: <author> Date: <author date> Subject: [PATCH] <title line>
<full commit message>
raw
The raw format shows the entire commit exactly as stored in the commit object. Notably, the SHA1s are displayed in full, regardless of whether --abbrev or --no-abbrev are used, and parents information show the true parent commits, without taking grafts nor history simplification into account.
format:
The format: format allows you to specify which information you want to show. It works a little bit like printf format, with the notable exception that you get a newline with %n instead of \n.
E.g, format:"The author of %h was %an, %ar%nThe title was >>%s<<%n" would show something like this:
The author of fe6e0ee was Junio C Hamano, 23 hours ago The title was >>t4119: test autocomputing -p<n> for traditional diff input.<<
The placeholders are:
%H: commit hash
%h: abbreviated commit hash
%T: tree hash
%t: abbreviated tree hash
%P: parent hashes
%p: abbreviated parent hashes
%an: author name
%aN: author name (respecting .mailmap, see git-shortlog(1) or git-blame(1))
%ae: author email
%aE: author email (respecting .mailmap, see git-shortlog(1) or git-blame(1))
%ad: author date (format respects --date= option)
%aD: author date, RFC2822 style
%ar: author date, relative
%at: author date, UNIX timestamp
%ai: author date, ISO 8601 format
%cn: committer name
%cN: committer name (respecting .mailmap, see git-shortlog(1) or git-blame(1))
%ce: committer email
%cE: committer email (respecting .mailmap, see git-shortlog(1) or git-blame(1))
%cd: committer date
%cD: committer date, RFC2822 style
%cr: committer date, relative
%ct: committer date, UNIX timestamp
%ci: committer date, ISO 8601 format
%d: ref names, like the --decorate option of git-log(1)
%e: encoding
%s: subject
%f: sanitized subject line, suitable for a filename
%b: body
%Cred: switch color to red
%Cgreen: switch color to green
%Cblue: switch color to blue
%Creset: reset color
%C(...): color specification, as described in color.branch.* config option
%m: left, right or boundary mark
%n: newline
%x00: print a byte from a hex code
tformat:
The tformat: format works exactly like format:, except that it provides "terminator" semantics instead of "separator" semantics. In other words, each commit has the message terminator character (usually a newline) appended, rather than a separator placed between entries. This means that the final entry of a single-line format will be properly terminated with a new line, just as the "oneline" format does. For example:
$ git log -2 --pretty=format:%h 4da45bef \ | perl -pe '$_ .= " -- NO NEWLINE\n" unless /\n/' 4da45be 7134973 -- NO NEWLINE $ git log -2 --pretty=tformat:%h 4da45bef \ | perl -pe '$_ .= " -- NO NEWLINE\n" unless /\n/' 4da45be 7134973
In addition, any unrecognized string that has a % in it is interpreted as if it has tformat: in front of it. For example, these two are equivalent:
$ git log -2 --pretty=tformat:%h 4da45bef $ git log -2 --pretty=%h 4da45bef
git show v1.0.0
git show v1.0.0^{tree}
git show next~10:Documentation/README
git show master:Makefile master:t/Makefile
At the core level, git is character encoding agnostic.
Although we encourage that the commit log messages are encoded in UTF-8, both the core and git Porcelain are designed not to force UTF-8 on projects. If all participants of a particular project find it more convenient to use legacy encodings, git does not forbid it. However, there are a few things to keep in mind.
git-commit and git-commit-tree issues a warning if the commit log message given to it does not look like a valid UTF-8 string, unless you explicitly say your project uses a legacy encoding. The way to say this is to have i18n.commitencoding in .git/config file, like this:
[i18n] commitencoding = ISO-8859-1
Commit objects created with the above setting record the value of i18n.commitencoding in its encoding header. This is to help other people who look at them later. Lack of this header implies that the commit log message is encoded in UTF-8.
git-log, git-show, git-blame and friends look at the encoding header of a commit object, and try to re-code the log message into UTF-8 unless otherwise specified. You can specify the desired output encoding with i18n.logoutputencoding in .git/config file, like this:
[i18n] logoutputencoding = ISO-8859-1
If you do not have this configuration variable, the value of i18n.commitencoding is used instead.
Note that we deliberately chose not to re-code the commit log message when a commit is made to force UTF-8 at the commit object level, because re-coding to UTF-8 is not necessarily a reversible operation.
Written by Linus Torvalds <m[blue]torvalds@osdl.orgm[][1]> and Junio C Hamano <m[blue]gitster@pobox.comm[][2]>. Significantly enhanced by Johannes Schindelin <m[blue]Johannes.Schindelin@gmx.dem[][3]>.
Documentation by David Greaves, Petr Baudis and the git-list <m[blue]git@vger.kernel.orgm[][4]>.
Part of the git(1) suite