GIT-LS-TREE(1) Git Manual GIT-LS-TREE(1)

NAME

git-ls-tree - List the contents of a tree object

SYNOPSIS

git ls-tree [-d] [-r] [-t] [-l] [-z]
[--name-only] [--name-status] [--object-only] [--full-name] [--full-tree] [--abbrev[=<n>]] [--format=<format>]
<tree-ish> [<path>...]

DESCRIPTION

Lists the contents of a given tree object, like what "/bin/ls -a"
does in the current working directory. Note that:

+o 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.

+o 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 -r was not passed. -d implies -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\0 line termination on output and do not quote filenames.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-only or --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 %xNN where NN are hex
digits interpolates to character with hex code NN; for example
%x00 interpolates to \0 (NUL), %x09 to \t (TAB) and %x0a to \n
(LF). When specified, --format cannot be combined with other
format-altering options, including --long, --name-only and
--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

Git 2.48.1 2025-01-13 GIT-LS-TREE(1)