GIT-CAT-FILE(1) Git Manual GIT-CAT-FILE(1)

NAME

git-cat-file - Provide contents or details of repository objects

SYNOPSIS

git cat-file <type> <object>
git cat-file (-e | -p) <object>
git cat-file (-t | -s) [--allow-unknown-type] <object>
git cat-file (--textconv | --filters)
[<rev>:<path|tree-ish> | --path=<path|tree-ish> <rev>]
git cat-file (--batch | --batch-check | --batch-command) [--batch-all-objects]
[--buffer] [--follow-symlinks] [--unordered]
[--textconv | --filters] [-Z]

DESCRIPTION

Output the contents or other properties such as size, type or delta
information of one or more objects.

This command can operate in two modes, depending on whether an option
from the --batch family is specified.

In non-batch mode, the command provides information on an object
named on the command line.

In batch mode, arguments are read from standard input.

OPTIONS

<object>
The name of the object to show. For a more complete list of ways
to spell object names, see the "SPECIFYING REVISIONS" section in
gitrevisions(7).

-t
Instead of the content, show the object type identified by
<object>.

-s
Instead of the content, show the object size identified by
<object>. If used with --use-mailmap option, will show the size
of updated object after replacing idents using the mailmap
mechanism.

-e
Exit with zero status if <object> exists and is a valid object.
If <object> is of an invalid format, exit with non-zero status
and emit an error on stderr.

-p
Pretty-print the contents of <object> based on its type.

<type>
Typically this matches the real type of <object> but asking for a
type that can trivially be dereferenced from the given <object>
is also permitted. An example is to ask for a "tree" with
<object> being a commit object that contains it, or to ask for a
"blob" with <object> being a tag object that points at it.

--[no-]mailmap, --[no-]use-mailmap
Use mailmap file to map author, committer and tagger names and
email addresses to canonical real names and email addresses. See
git-shortlog(1).

--textconv
Show the content as transformed by a textconv filter. In this
case, <object> has to be of the form <tree-ish>:<path>, or
:<path> in order to apply the filter to the content recorded in
the index at <path>.

--filters
Show the content as converted by the filters configured in the
current working tree for the given <path> (i.e. smudge filters,
end-of-line conversion, etc). In this case, <object> has to be of
the form <tree-ish>:<path>, or :<path>.

--path=<path>
For use with --textconv or --filters, to allow specifying an
object name and a path separately, e.g. when it is difficult to
figure out the revision from which the blob came.

--batch, --batch=<format>
Print object information and contents for each object provided on
stdin. May not be combined with any other options or arguments
except --textconv, --filters, or --use-mailmap.

+o When used with --textconv or --filters, the input lines must
specify the path, separated by whitespace. See the section
BATCH OUTPUT below for details.

+o When used with --use-mailmap, for commit and tag objects, the
contents part of the output shows the identities replaced
using the mailmap mechanism, while the information part of
the output shows the size of the object as if it actually
recorded the replacement identities.

--batch-check, --batch-check=<format>
Print object information for each object provided on stdin. May
not be combined with any other options or arguments except
--textconv, --filters or --use-mailmap.

+o When used with --textconv or --filters, the input lines must
specify the path, separated by whitespace. See the section
BATCH OUTPUT below for details.

+o When used with --use-mailmap, for commit and tag objects, the
printed object information shows the size of the object as if
the identities recorded in it were replaced by the mailmap
mechanism.

--batch-command, --batch-command=<format>
Enter a command mode that reads commands and arguments from
stdin. May only be combined with --buffer, --textconv,
--use-mailmap or --filters.

+o When used with --textconv or --filters, the input lines must
specify the path, separated by whitespace. See the section
BATCH OUTPUT below for details.

+o When used with --use-mailmap, for commit and tag objects, the
contents command shows the identities replaced using the
mailmap mechanism, while the info command shows the size of
the object as if it actually recorded the replacement
identities.

--batch-command recognizes the following commands:

contents <object>
Print object contents for object reference <object>. This
corresponds to the output of --batch.

info <object>
Print object info for object reference <object>. This
corresponds to the output of --batch-check.

flush
Used with --buffer to execute all preceding commands that
were issued since the beginning or since the last flush was
issued. When --buffer is used, no output will come until a
flush is issued. When --buffer is not used, commands are
flushed each time without issuing flush.

--batch-all-objects
Instead of reading a list of objects on stdin, perform the
requested batch operation on all objects in the repository and
any alternate object stores (not just reachable objects).
Requires --batch or --batch-check be specified. By default, the
objects are visited in order sorted by their hashes; see also
--unordered below. Objects are presented as-is, without
respecting the "replace" mechanism of git-replace(1).

--buffer
Normally batch output is flushed after each object is output, so
that a process can interactively read and write from cat-file.
With this option, the output uses normal stdio buffering; this is
much more efficient when invoking --batch-check or
--batch-command on a large number of objects.

--unordered
When --batch-all-objects is in use, visit objects in an order
which may be more efficient for accessing the object contents
than hash order. The exact details of the order are unspecified,
but if you do not require a specific order, this should generally
result in faster output, especially with --batch. Note that
cat-file will still show each object only once, even if it is
stored multiple times in the repository.

--allow-unknown-type
Allow -s or -t to query broken/corrupt objects of unknown type.

--follow-symlinks
With --batch or --batch-check, follow symlinks inside the
repository when requesting objects with extended SHA-1
expressions of the form tree-ish:path-in-tree. Instead of
providing output about the link itself, provide output about the
linked-to object. If a symlink points outside the tree-ish (e.g.
a link to /foo or a root-level link to ../foo), the portion of
the link which is outside the tree will be printed.

This option does not (currently) work correctly when an object in
the index is specified (e.g. :link instead of HEAD:link) rather
than one in the tree.

This option cannot (currently) be used unless --batch or
--batch-check is used.

For example, consider a git repository containing:

f: a file containing "hello\n"
link: a symlink to f
dir/link: a symlink to ../f
plink: a symlink to ../f
alink: a symlink to /etc/passwd

For a regular file f, echo HEAD:f | git cat-file --batch would
print

ce013625030ba8dba906f756967f9e9ca394464a blob 6

And echo HEAD:link | git cat-file --batch --follow-symlinks would
print the same thing, as would HEAD:dir/link, as they both point
at HEAD:f.

Without --follow-symlinks, these would print data about the
symlink itself. In the case of HEAD:link, you would see

4d1ae35ba2c8ec712fa2a379db44ad639ca277bd blob 1

Both plink and alink point outside the tree, so they would
respectively print:

symlink 4
../f

symlink 11
/etc/passwd

-Z
Only meaningful with --batch, --batch-check, or --batch-command;
input and output is NUL-delimited instead of newline-delimited.

-z
Only meaningful with --batch, --batch-check, or --batch-command;
input is NUL-delimited instead of newline-delimited. This option
is deprecated in favor of -Z as the output can otherwise be
ambiguous.

OUTPUT

If -t is specified, one of the <type>.

If -s is specified, the size of the <object> in bytes.

If -e is specified, no output, unless the <object> is malformed.

If -p is specified, the contents of <object> are pretty-printed.

If <type> is specified, the raw (though uncompressed) contents of the
<object> will be returned.

BATCH OUTPUT

If --batch or --batch-check is given, cat-file will read objects from
stdin, one per line, and print information about them in the same
order as they have been read. By default, the whole line is
considered as an object, as if it were fed to git-rev-parse(1).

When --batch-command is given, cat-file will read commands from
stdin, one per line, and print information based on the command
given. With --batch-command, the info command followed by an object
will print information about the object the same way --batch-check
would, and the contents command followed by an object prints contents
in the same way --batch would.

You can specify the information shown for each object by using a
custom <format>. The <format> is copied literally to stdout for each
object, with placeholders of the form %(atom) expanded, followed by a
newline. The available atoms are:

objectname
The full hex representation of the object name.

objecttype
The type of the object (the same as cat-file -t reports).

objectsize
The size, in bytes, of the object (the same as cat-file -s
reports).

objectsize:disk
The size, in bytes, that the object takes up on disk. See the
note about on-disk sizes in the CAVEATS section below.

deltabase
If the object is stored as a delta on-disk, this expands to the
full hex representation of the delta base object name. Otherwise,
expands to the null OID (all zeroes). See CAVEATS below.

rest
If this atom is used in the output string, input lines are split
at the first whitespace boundary. All characters before that
whitespace are considered to be the object name; characters after
that first run of whitespace (i.e., the "rest" of the line) are
output in place of the %(rest) atom.

If no format is specified, the default format is %(objectname)
%(objecttype) %(objectsize).

If --batch is specified, or if --batch-command is used with the
contents command, the object information is followed by the object
contents (consisting of %(objectsize) bytes), followed by a newline.

For example, --batch without a custom format would produce:

<oid> SP <type> SP <size> LF
<contents> LF

Whereas --batch-check='%(objectname) %(objecttype)' would produce:

<oid> SP <type> LF

If a name is specified on stdin that cannot be resolved to an object
in the repository, then cat-file will ignore any custom format and
print:

<object> SP missing LF

If a name is specified that might refer to more than one object (an
ambiguous short sha), then cat-file will ignore any custom format and
print:

<object> SP ambiguous LF

If --follow-symlinks is used, and a symlink in the repository points
outside the repository, then cat-file will ignore any custom format
and print:

symlink SP <size> LF
<symlink> LF

The symlink will either be absolute (beginning with a /), or relative
to the tree root. For instance, if dir/link points to ../../foo, then
<symlink> will be ../foo. <size> is the size of the symlink in bytes.

If --follow-symlinks is used, the following error messages will be
displayed:

<object> SP missing LF

is printed when the initial symlink requested does not exist.

dangling SP <size> LF
<object> LF

is printed when the initial symlink exists, but something that it
(transitive-of) points to does not.

loop SP <size> LF
<object> LF

is printed for symlink loops (or any symlinks that require more than
40 link resolutions to resolve).

notdir SP <size> LF
<object> LF

is printed when, during symlink resolution, a file is used as a
directory name.

Alternatively, when -Z is passed, the line feeds in any of the above
examples are replaced with NUL terminators. This ensures that output
will be parsable if the output itself would contain a linefeed and is
thus recommended for scripting purposes.

CAVEATS

Note that the sizes of objects on disk are reported accurately, but
care should be taken in drawing conclusions about which refs or
objects are responsible for disk usage. The size of a packed
non-delta object may be much larger than the size of objects which
delta against it, but the choice of which object is the base and
which is the delta is arbitrary and is subject to change during a
repack.

Note also that multiple copies of an object may be present in the
object database; in this case, it is undefined which copy's size or
delta base will be reported.

GIT

Part of the git(1) suite

Git 2.48.1 2025-01-13 GIT-CAT-FILE(1)