On Tue, Jan 05, 2021 at 04:24:56PM +0100, Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason wrote: > > My question is, is there a "better" (more idiomatic, less > > "expensive", etc.) way of doing it using only one plumbing command? > > This solution is OK but it is more work than just matching one line > > with a regular expression. The reason I want to do this using only > > plumbing commands is because I think that plumbing command interface > > would be more stable than the format (organization, structure) of > > files under the `.git/` directory across Git versions. Please > > correct me if I'm wrong in this idea as well. > > You'll want to use git-rev-parse for this, e.g.: > > $ git rev-parse --symbolic-full-name HEAD > refs/heads/master Another option is: git symbolic-ref HEAD which has the benefit of working even when HEAD points to an unborn branch. It also has a --short option to drop the refs/heads/ part. It's also worth noting what you'd see on a detached HEAD. With rev-parse you'll see "HEAD", but symbolic-ref will exit with a non-zero code. -Peff
