Question

Say I’m in a Git repository. I delete a file and commit that change. I continue working and make some more commits. Then, I discover that I need to restore that file after deleting it.

I know I can checkout a file using git checkout <commit> -- filename.txt, but I don’t know when that file was deleted.

1. How do I find the commit that deleted a given filename?
2. How do I restore that file back into my working copy?

Answer 1

Find the last commit that affected the given path. As the file isn’t in the HEAD commit, that previous commit must have deleted it.

git rev-list -n 1 HEAD -- <file_path>

Then checkout the version at the commit before, using the caret (^) symbol:

git checkout <deleting_commit>^ -- <file_path>

Or in one command, if $file is the file in question.

git checkout $(git rev-list -n 1 HEAD -- "$file")^ -- "$file"

---

If you are using zsh and have the EXTENDED_GLOB option enabled, the caret symbol won’t work. You can use ~1 instead.

git checkout $(git rev-list -n 1 HEAD -- "$file")~1 -- "$file"