Question

I presume

git checkout .

deletes all unstaged edits because — is optional in:

git checkout [-p|--patch] [<tree-ish>] [--] [<paths>...]

This seems like something I might typo and there’s no “are you sure?” check, even in git-config as far as I can see. And since those changes haven’t ever been committed, they’re of course not in the reflog, so there’s no way to get them back.

Any way to make it prompt me before deleting my unstaged edits?
I’ve made a TextExpander snippet that rewrites git checkout . as #git checkout ., but hopefully there’s a better way.

Answer 1

You can add an alias and convience yourself to use that instead. IE, create this shell script:

#!/bin/sh

if test "$1" = "." ; then
    echo -n "Are you sure (y/n)? "
    read ans
    if test "$ans" != "y" ; then
    echo "aborting"
    exit
    fi
fi

git checkout "$@"

and call it git-safecheckout, and then alias it to something like co:

# git config --global alias.co '!git-safecheckout'

And the git co instead:

# git co .
git co .
Are you sure (y/n)? n
aborting

# git co .
Are you sure (y/n)? y
#

[Obviously there are a million ways you can feature-creep that shellscript]