man > GIT-LS-TREE

GIT-LS-TREE(1)                               Git Manual                               GIT-LS-TREE(1)

NAME
       git-ls-tree - List the contents of a tree object

SYNOPSIS
       git ls-tree [-d] [-r] [-t] [-l] [-z]
                   [--name-only] [--name-status] [--object-only] [--full-name] [--full-tree] [--abbrev[=<n>]] [--format=<format>]
                   <tree-ish> [<path>...]


DESCRIPTION
       Lists the contents of a given tree object, like what "/bin/ls -a" does in the current working
       directory. Note that:

       •   the behaviour is slightly different from that of "/bin/ls" in that the <path> denotes
           just a list of patterns to match, e.g. so specifying directory name (without -r) will
           behave differently, and order of the arguments does not matter.

       •   the behaviour is similar to that of "/bin/ls" in that the <path> is taken as relative to
           the current working directory. E.g. when you are in a directory sub that has a directory
           dir, you can run git ls-tree -r HEAD dir to list the contents of the tree (that is
           sub/dir in HEAD). You don’t want to give a tree that is not at the root level (e.g.  git
           ls-tree -r HEAD:sub dir) in this case, as that would result in asking for sub/sub/dir in
           the HEAD commit. However, the current working directory can be ignored by passing
           --full-tree option.

OPTIONS
       <tree-ish>
           Id of a tree-ish.

       -d
           Show only the named tree entry itself, not its children.

       -r
           Recurse into sub-trees.

       -t
           Show tree entries even when going to recurse them. Has no effect if -r was not passed.
           -d implies -t.

       -l, --long
           Show object size of blob (file) entries.

       -z
           \0 line termination on output and do not quote filenames. See OUTPUT FORMAT below for
           more information.

       --name-only, --name-status
           List only filenames (instead of the "long" output), one per line. Cannot be combined with
           --object-only.

       --object-only
           List only names of the objects, one per line. Cannot be combined with --name-only or
           --name-status. This is equivalent to specifying --format='%(objectname)', but for both
           this option and that exact format the command takes a hand-optimized codepath instead of
           going through the generic formatting mechanism.

       --abbrev[=<n>]
           Instead of showing the full 40-byte hexadecimal object lines, show the shortest prefix
           that is at least <n> hexdigits long that uniquely refers the object. Non default number
           of digits can be specified with --abbrev=<n>.

       --full-name
           Instead of showing the path names relative to the current working directory, show the
           full path names.

       --full-tree
           Do not limit the listing to the current working directory. Implies --full-name.

       --format=<format>
           A string that interpolates %(fieldname) from the result being shown. It also interpolates
           %% to %, and %xNN where NN are hex digits interpolates to character with hex code NN; for
           example %x00 interpolates to \0 (NUL), %x09 to \t (TAB) and %x0a to \n (LF). When
           specified, --format cannot be combined with other format-altering options, including
           --long, --name-only and --object-only.

       [<path>...]
           When paths are given, show them (note that this isn’t really raw pathnames, but rather a
           list of patterns to match). Otherwise implicitly uses the root level of the tree as the
           sole path argument.

OUTPUT FORMAT
       The output format of ls-tree is determined by either the --format option, or other
       format-altering options such as --name-only etc. (see --format above).

       The use of certain --format directives is equivalent to using those options, but invoking the
       full formatting machinery can be slower than using an appropriate formatting option.

       In cases where the --format would exactly map to an existing option ls-tree will use the
       appropriate faster path. Thus the default format is equivalent to:

           %(objectmode) %(objecttype) %(objectname)%x09%(path)

       This output format is compatible with what --index-info --stdin of git update-index expects.

       When the -l option is used, format changes to

           %(objectmode) %(objecttype) %(objectname) %(objectsize:padded)%x09%(path)

       Object size identified by <objectname> is given in bytes, and right-justified with minimum
       width of 7 characters. Object size is given only for blobs (file) entries; for other entries
       - character is used in place of size.

       Without the -z option, pathnames with "unusual" characters are quoted as explained for the
       configuration variable core.quotePath (see git-config(1)). Using -z the filename is output
       verbatim and the line is terminated by a NUL byte.

       Customized format:

       It is possible to print in a custom format by using the --format option, which is able to
       interpolate different fields using a %(fieldname) notation. For example, if you only care
       about the "objectname" and "path" fields, you can execute with a specific "--format" like

           git ls-tree --format='%(objectname) %(path)' <tree-ish>

FIELD NAMES
       Various values from structured fields can be used to interpolate into the resulting output.
       For each outputting line, the following names can be used:

       objectmode
           The mode of the object.

       objecttype
           The type of the object (commit, blob or tree).

       objectname
           The name of the object.

       objectsize[:padded]
           The size of a blob object ("-" if it’s a commit or tree). It also supports a padded
           format of size with "%(objectsize:padded)".

       path
           The pathname of the object.

GIT
       Part of the git(1) suite

Git 2.43.0                                   07/02/2025                               GIT-LS-TREE(1)