On Fri, Oct 08, 2021 at 05:51:17PM +0000, Alan Mackenzie wrote: > I would like there to be a command something like: > > $ git cat bar-branch -- foo.c > > .. Is there such a command, and if so, what's it called and how do I use > it? I assumed it might be git cat-file, but I couldn't get it to work, > and couldn't understand it's man page. Konstantin pointed you at git-show, which is what I would have used. But I just wanted to mention that you were on the right track. The invocation you wanted was: git cat-file blob bar-branch:foo.c or: git cat-file -p bar-branch:foo.c (the "-p" is "pretty-print based on the object's type", so the two are equivalent). > Where might I have found this information for myself? You found the cat-file manpage, which I agree is a bit thick. An Examples section would probably help a lot. The other thing that might have helped is the gitrevisions(7) page, especially the <rev>:<path> entry. Your example above to use "<revs> -- <pathspec>" was a good thought, but the path there is for limiting diffs and traversals. What you want here is to specify the name of a single object, and gitrevisions gives all the ways to do that. -Peff
