Question

Is there a way to quickly detect if there are any untracked files?

I can list all of the untracked files with

git ls-files --other --directory --exclude-standard

But this is slow if there are many untracked files. Is there something like git diff -q where the exit status determines whether or not any untracked files exist?

Answer 1

If you have what you want when you’ve seen the first untracked file, quit right then.

If you’re on GNU/anything

git ls-files --other --directory --exclude-standard | sed q1

will set rc1 if there are any

Otherwise,

anyuntracked() {
    return `git ls-files -o --directory --exclude-standard | sed q | wc -l`
}
anyuntracked

will do the same job