git-ls-tree1
List the contents of a tree object
Usage
git ls-tree
[-d]
[-r]
[-t]
[-l]
[-z]
[--name-only]
[--name-status]
[--object-only]
[--full-name]
[--full-tree]
[--abbrev
[=<n>]]
[--format=<format>]
Overview
Lists the contents of a given tree object, like what "/bin/ls -a" does in the current working directory. Note that:
• the behaviour is slightly different from that of "/bin/ls" in that the <path> denotes just a list of patterns to match, e.g. so specifying directory name (without -r) will behave differently, and order of the arguments does not matter.
• the behaviour is similar to that of "/bin/ls" in that the <path> is taken as relative to the current working directory. E.g. when you are in a directory sub that has a directory dir, you can run git ls-tree -r HEAD dir to list the contents of the tree (that is sub/dir in HEAD). You don’t want to give a tree that is not at the root level (e.g. git ls-tree -r HEAD:sub dir) in this case, as that would result in asking for sub/sub/dir in the HEAD commit. However, the current working directory can be ignored by passing --full-tree option.
Options
<tree-ish>
Id of a tree-ish.
-
-d -
Show only the named tree entry itself, not its children.
-
-r -
Recurse into sub-trees.
-
-t -
Show tree entries even when going to recurse them. Has no effect if
-rwas not passed.-dimplies-t.
-
-l, --long -
Show object size of blob (file) entries.
-
-z -
\0 line termination on output and do not quote filenames. See OUTPUT FORMAT below for more information.
-
--name-only, --name-status -
List only filenames (instead of the "long" output), one per line. Cannot be combined with
--object-only.
-
--object-only -
List only names of the objects, one per line. Cannot be combined with
--name-onlyor--name-status. This is equivalent to specifying--format='%(objectname)', but for both this option and that exact format the command takes a hand-optimized codepath instead of going through the generic formatting mechanism.
-
--abbrev[=<n>] -
Instead of showing the full 40-byte hexadecimal object lines, show the shortest prefix that is at least <n> hexdigits long that uniquely refers the object. Non default number of digits can be specified with --abbrev=<n>.
-
--full-name -
Instead of showing the path names relative to the current working directory, show the full path names.
-
--full-tree -
Do not limit the listing to the current working directory. Implies --full-name.
-
--format=<format> -
A string that interpolates %(
fieldname) from the result being shown. It also interpolates %% to %, and%xNNwhere NN are hex digits interpolates to character with hex code NN; for example%x00interpolates to\0(NUL),%x09to\t(TAB) and%x0ato\n(LF). When specified,--formatcannot be combined with other format-altering options, including--long,--name-onlyand--object-only.
[<path>...]
When paths are given, show them (note that this isn’t really raw pathnames, but rather a list of patterns to match). Otherwise implicitly uses the root level of the tree as the sole path argument.
Output format
The output format of ls-tree is determined by either the --format option, or other format-altering options such as --name-only etc. (see --format above).
The use of certain --format directives is equivalent to using those options, but invoking the full formatting machinery can be slower than using an appropriate formatting option.
In cases where the --format would exactly map to an existing option ls-tree will use the appropriate faster path. Thus the default format is equivalent to:
%(objectmode) %(objecttype) %(objectname)%x09%(path)
This output format is compatible with what --index-info --stdin of git update-index expects.
When the -l option is used, format changes to
%(objectmode) %(objecttype) %(objectname) %(objectsize:padded)%x09%(path)
Object size identified by <objectname> is given in bytes, and right-justified with minimum width of 7 characters. Object size is given only for blobs (file) entries; for other entries - character is used in place of size.
Without the -z option, pathnames with "unusual" characters are quoted as explained for the configuration variable core.quotePath (see git-config(1)). Using -z the filename is output verbatim and the line is terminated by a NUL byte.
Customized format:
It is possible to print in a custom format by using the --format option, which is able to interpolate different fields using a %(fieldname) notation. For example, if you only care about the "objectname" and "path" fields, you can execute with a specific "--format" like
git ls-tree --format='%(objectname) %(path)' <tree-ish>
Field names
Various values from structured fields can be used to interpolate into the resulting output. For each outputting line, the following names can be used:
objectmode
The mode of the object.
objecttype
The type of the object (commit, blob or tree).
objectname
The name of the object.
objectsize[:padded]
The size of a blob object ("-" if it’s a commit or tree). It also supports a padded format of size with "%(objectsize:padded)".
path
The pathname of the object.
Git
Part of the git(1) suite
Releases
11 releases since Debian 4.0 (Etch); the text changed 10 times.
--format since Debian 12 (Bookworm);
--full-tree since Debian 6.0 (Squeeze);
--long since Debian 5.0 (Lenny);
--object-only since Debian 12 (Bookworm);
-l since Debian 5.0 (Lenny).