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HTML rendering created 2025-09-06 by Michael Kerrisk, author of The Linux Programming Interface. For details of in-depth Linux/UNIX system programming training courses that I teach, look here. Hosting by jambit GmbH. |
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NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | OPTIONS | OUTPUT | EXAMPLES | FILES | SEE ALSO | GIT | COLOPHON |
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GIT-SHOW-REF(1) Git Manual GIT-SHOW-REF(1)
git-show-ref - List references in a local repository
git show-ref [--head] [-d | --dereference]
[-s | --hash[=<n>]] [--abbrev[=<n>]] [--branches] [--tags]
[--] [<pattern>...]
git show-ref --verify [-q | --quiet] [-d | --dereference]
[-s | --hash[=<n>]] [--abbrev[=<n>]]
[--] [<ref>...]
git show-ref --exclude-existing[=<pattern>]
git show-ref --exists <ref>
Displays references available in a local repository along with the
associated commit IDs. Results can be filtered using a pattern and
tags can be dereferenced into object IDs. Additionally, it can be
used to test whether a particular ref exists.
By default, shows the tags, heads, and remote refs.
The --exclude-existing form is a filter that does the inverse. It
reads refs from stdin, one ref per line, and shows those that
don’t exist in the local repository.
The --exists form can be used to check for the existence of a
single references. This form does not verify whether the reference
resolves to an actual object.
Use of this utility is encouraged in favor of directly accessing
files under the .git directory.
--head
Show the HEAD reference, even if it would normally be filtered
out.
--branches, --tags
Limit to local branches and local tags, respectively. These
options are not mutually exclusive; when given both,
references stored in "refs/heads" and "refs/tags" are
displayed. Note that --heads is a deprecated synonym for
--branches and may be removed in the future.
-d, --dereference
Dereference tags into object IDs as well. They will be shown
with ^{} appended.
-s, --hash[=<n>]
Only show the OID, not the reference name. When combined with
--dereference, the dereferenced tag will still be shown after
the OID.
--verify
Enable stricter reference checking by requiring an exact ref
path. Aside from returning an error code of 1, it will also
print an error message if --quiet was not specified.
--exists
Check whether the given reference exists. Returns an exit code
of 0 if it does, 2 if it is missing, and 1 in case looking up
the reference failed with an error other than the reference
being missing.
--abbrev[=<n>]
Abbreviate the object name. When using --hash, you do not have
to say --hash --abbrev; --hash=n would do.
-q, --quiet
Do not print any results to stdout. Can be used with --verify
to silently check if a reference exists.
--exclude-existing[=<pattern>]
Make git show-ref act as a filter that reads refs from stdin
of the form ^(?:<anything>\s)?<refname>(?:\^{})?$ and performs
the following actions on each: (1) strip ^{} at the end of
line if any; (2) ignore if pattern is provided and does not
head-match refname; (3) warn if refname is not a well-formed
refname and skip; (4) ignore if refname is a ref that exists
in the local repository; (5) otherwise output the line.
<pattern>...
Show references matching one or more patterns. Patterns are
matched from the end of the full name, and only complete parts
are matched, e.g. master matches refs/heads/master,
refs/remotes/origin/master, refs/tags/jedi/master but not
refs/heads/mymaster or refs/remotes/master/jedi.
The output is in the format:
<oid> SP <ref> LF
For example,
$ git show-ref --head --dereference
832e76a9899f560a90ffd62ae2ce83bbeff58f54 HEAD
832e76a9899f560a90ffd62ae2ce83bbeff58f54 refs/heads/master
832e76a9899f560a90ffd62ae2ce83bbeff58f54 refs/heads/origin
3521017556c5de4159da4615a39fa4d5d2c279b5 refs/tags/v0.99.9c
6ddc0964034342519a87fe013781abf31c6db6ad refs/tags/v0.99.9c^{}
055e4ae3ae6eb344cbabf2a5256a49ea66040131 refs/tags/v1.0rc4
423325a2d24638ddcc82ce47be5e40be550f4507 refs/tags/v1.0rc4^{}
...
When using --hash (and not --dereference), the output is in the
format:
<oid> LF
For example,
$ git show-ref --branches --hash
2e3ba0114a1f52b47df29743d6915d056be13278
185008ae97960c8d551adcd9e23565194651b5d1
03adf42c988195b50e1a1935ba5fcbc39b2b029b
...
To show all references called "master", whether tags or heads or
anything else, and regardless of how deep in the reference naming
hierarchy they are, use:
git show-ref master
This will show "refs/heads/master" but also
"refs/remote/other-repo/master", if such references exist.
When using the --verify flag, the command requires an exact path:
git show-ref --verify refs/heads/master
will only match the exact branch called "master".
If nothing matches, git show-ref will return an error code of 1,
and in the case of verification, it will show an error message.
For scripting, you can ask it to be quiet with the --quiet flag,
which allows you to do things like
git show-ref --quiet --verify -- "refs/heads/$headname" ||
echo "$headname is not a valid branch"
to check whether a particular branch exists or not (notice how we
don’t actually want to show any results, and we want to use the
full refname for it in order to not trigger the problem with
ambiguous partial matches).
To show only tags, or only proper branch heads, use --tags and/or
--branches respectively (using both means that it shows tags and
branches, but not other random references under the refs/
subdirectory).
To do automatic tag object dereferencing, use the -d or
--dereference flag, so you can do
git show-ref --tags --dereference
to get a listing of all tags together with what they dereference.
.git/refs/*, .git/packed-refs
git-for-each-ref(1), git-ls-remote(1), git-update-ref(1),
gitrepository-layout(5)
Part of the git(1) suite
This page is part of the git (Git distributed version control
system) project. Information about the project can be found at
⟨http://git-scm.com/⟩. If you have a bug report for this manual
page, see ⟨http://git-scm.com/community⟩. This page was obtained
from the project's upstream Git repository
⟨https://github.com/git/git.git⟩ on 2025-08-11. (At that time,
the date of the most recent commit that was found in the
repository was 2025-08-07.) If you discover any rendering
problems in this HTML version of the page, or you believe there is
a better or more up-to-date source for the page, or you have
corrections or improvements to the information in this COLOPHON
(which is not part of the original manual page), send a mail to
man-pages@man7.org
Git 2.51.0.rc1 2025-08-07 GIT-SHOW-REF(1)
Pages that refer to this page: git(1), git-for-each-ref(1), gitformat-bundle(5)
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HTML rendering created 2025-09-06 by Michael Kerrisk, author of The Linux Programming Interface. For details of in-depth Linux/UNIX system programming training courses that I teach, look here. Hosting by jambit GmbH. |
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