Difference between “git checkout ” and “git checkout -​- “

by

The special “option” -- means “treat every argument after this point as a file name, no matter what it looks like.” This is not Git-specific, it’s a general Unix command line convention. Normally you use it to clarify that an argument is a file name rather than an option, e.g.

rm -f      # does nothing
rm -- -f   # deletes a file named "-f"

git checkout1 also takes -- to mean that subsequent arguments are not its optional “treeish” parameter specifying which commit you want.

So in this context it’s safe to use -- always, but you need it when the file you want to revert has a name that begins with -, or is the same as the name of a branch. Some examples for branch/file disambiguation:

git checkout README     # would normally discard uncommitted changes
                        # to the _file_ "README"

git checkout master     # would normally switch the working copy to
                        # the _branch_ "master"

git checkout -- master  # discard uncommitted changes to the _file_ "master"

and option/file disambiguation:

git checkout -p -- README  # interactively discard uncommitted changes
                           # to the file "README"

git checkout -- -p README  # unconditionally discard all uncommitted
                           # changes to the files "-p" and "README"

I’m not sure what you do if you have a branch whose name begins with -. Perhaps don’t do that in the first place.

1 in this mode; “checkout” can do several other things as well. I have never understood why git chose to implement “discard uncommitted changes” as a mode of the “checkout” subcommand, rather than “revert” like most other VCSes, or “reset” which I think might make more sense in git’s own terms.

More Related Contents:

  1. How do I undo 'git add' before commit?
  2. How can I git stash a specific file?
  3. How do you stash an untracked file?
  4. Make the current Git branch a master branch
  5. How do I prevent ‘git diff’ from using a pager?
  6. Combine the first two commits of a Git repository?
  7. Git Push error: refusing to update checked out branch
  8. How can I completely remove a file from a git repository?
  9. Why does “git submodule add …” write to stderr rather than stdout?
  10. How do I merge changes to a single file, rather than merging commits?
  11. Git add and commit in one command
  12. Can you issue pull requests from the command line on GitHub?
  13. How do I disable git’s credential helper for a single repository?
  14. Clone A Private Repository (Github)
  15. Merge changes from remote github repository to your local repository
  16. How to perform better document version control on Excel files and SQL schema files
  17. How can I pass git SHA1 to compiler as definition using cmake?
  18. How do I find the most recent git commit that modified a file?
  19. Can’t seem to discard changes in Git
  20. The unauthenticated git protocol on port 9418 is no longer supported
  21. Your branch is ahead of ‘origin/master’ by 3 commits
  22. How to make Git properly display UTF-8 encoded pathnames in the console window?
  23. Git cherry-pick syntax and merge branches
  24. Can I update a forked project, on git, to the original/master copy?
  25. Git Checkout warning: unable to unlink files, permission denied
  26. What do git checkouts really mean?
  27. How to get Git log with short stat in one line?
  28. What is the reason for “Procfile declares types -> (none)” in Heroku?
  29. List of all commands that cause git gc –auto
  30. Can I include other .gitignore file in a .gitignore file? (like #include in c-like languages)

Leave a Comment