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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.

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

           •   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.

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

           •   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.

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

           •   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. 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