CODEWITHSUNDEEP
gitgit-checkout
Ahmed Mohamed
Ahmed Mohamed

Reputation: 51

What does this Command do " git checkout -- . "

I am beginner wit using git and I wanna know What this git command means 

git checkout -- .

I know that git checkout is for switching between branches but I don't know whta the above options means I tried to look on toturials but I didn't options like this one

Upvotes: 0

Views: 6306

Answers (2)

tmaj
tmaj

Reputation: 34987

It checks out the current directory and subdirectories.

tymtam@x:/mnt/c/tmp/x$ git status

        modified:   x.txt
        modified:   z/z1.txt
        modified:   z/z2/z2_1.txt

tymtam@x:/mnt/c/tmp/x$ cd z                // changing to subdirectory
tymtam@x:/mnt/c/tmp/x/z$ git checkout -- .
tymtam@x:/mnt/c/tmp/x/z$ git status

        modified:   ../x.txt

(I removed git chatter for brevity)

Upvotes: 0

Alexey Romanov
Alexey Romanov

Reputation: 170735

Neither -- nor . are git-specific:

The first -- argument that is not an option-argument should be accepted as a delimiter indicating the end of options. Any following arguments should be treated as operands, even if they begin with the '-' character.

(from https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/11376/what-does-double-dash-mean-also-known-as-bare-double-dash/11378).

. is the current directory.

git checkout is for switching between branches

If you look at https://git-scm.com/docs/git-checkout, this command has the form

git checkout [<tree-ish>] [--] <pathspec>…​

so it

Overwrite[s] paths in the working tree by replacing with the contents in the index or in the <tree-ish> (most often a commit).

"Paths" are . (the current directory) and "the <tree-ish>" is HEAD (the current commit Git points to), because you didn't specify another.

Upvotes: 2

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