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GIT-FOR-EACH-REF(1)                          Git Manual                          GIT-FOR-EACH-REF(1)



NAME
       git-for-each-ref - Output information on each ref

SYNOPSIS
       git for-each-ref [--count=<count>] [--shell|--perl|--python|--tcl]
                          [(--sort=<key>)...] [--format=<format>] [<pattern>...]
                          [--points-at=<object>]
                          [--merged[=<object>]] [--no-merged[=<object>]]
                          [--contains[=<object>]] [--no-contains[=<object>]]


DESCRIPTION
       Iterate over all refs that match <pattern> and show them according to the given <format>,
       after sorting them according to the given set of <key>. If <count> is given, stop after
       showing that many refs. The interpolated values in <format> can optionally be quoted as
       string literals in the specified host language allowing their direct evaluation in that
       language.

OPTIONS
       <pattern>...
           If one or more patterns are given, only refs are shown that match against at least one
           pattern, either using fnmatch(3) or literally, in the latter case matching completely or
           from the beginning up to a slash.

       --count=<count>
           By default the command shows all refs that match <pattern>. This option makes it stop
           after showing that many refs.

       --sort=<key>
           A field name to sort on. Prefix - to sort in descending order of the value. When
           unspecified, refname is used. You may use the --sort=<key> option multiple times, in
           which case the last key becomes the primary key.

       --format=<format>
           A string that interpolates %(fieldname) from a ref being shown and the object it points
           at. If fieldname is prefixed with an asterisk (*) and the ref points at a tag object, use
           the value for the field in the object which the tag object refers to (instead of the
           field in the tag object). When unspecified, <format> defaults to %(objectname) SPC
           %(objecttype) TAB %(refname). It also interpolates %% to %, and %xx where xx are hex
           digits interpolates to character with hex code xx; for example %00 interpolates to \0
           (NUL), %09 to \t (TAB) and %0a to \n (LF).

       --color[=<when>]
           Respect any colors specified in the --format option. The <when> field must be one of
           always, never, or auto (if <when> is absent, behave as if always was given).

       --shell, --perl, --python, --tcl
           If given, strings that substitute %(fieldname) placeholders are quoted as string literals
           suitable for the specified host language. This is meant to produce a scriptlet that can
           directly be `eval`ed.

       --points-at=<object>
           Only list refs which points at the given object.

       --merged[=<object>]
           Only list refs whose tips are reachable from the specified commit (HEAD if not
           specified).

       --no-merged[=<object>]
           Only list refs whose tips are not reachable from the specified commit (HEAD if not
           specified).

       --contains[=<object>]
           Only list refs which contain the specified commit (HEAD if not specified).

       --no-contains[=<object>]
           Only list refs which don’t contain the specified commit (HEAD if not specified).

       --ignore-case
           Sorting and filtering refs are case insensitive.

FIELD NAMES
       Various values from structured fields in referenced objects can be used to interpolate into
       the resulting output, or as sort keys.

       For all objects, the following names can be used:

       refname
           The name of the ref (the part after $GIT_DIR/). For a non-ambiguous short name of the ref
           append :short. The option core.warnAmbiguousRefs is used to select the strict
           abbreviation mode. If lstrip=<N> (rstrip=<N>) is appended, strips <N> slash-separated
           path components from the front (back) of the refname (e.g.  %(refname:lstrip=2) turns
           refs/tags/foo into foo and %(refname:rstrip=2) turns refs/tags/foo into refs). If <N> is
           a negative number, strip as many path components as necessary from the specified end to
           leave -<N> path components (e.g.  %(refname:lstrip=-2) turns refs/tags/foo into tags/foo
           and %(refname:rstrip=-1) turns refs/tags/foo into refs). When the ref does not have
           enough components, the result becomes an empty string if stripping with positive <N>, or
           it becomes the full refname if stripping with negative <N>. Neither is an error.

           strip can be used as a synonym to lstrip.

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

       objectsize
           The size of the object (the same as git cat-file -s reports). Append :disk to get the
           size, in bytes, that the object takes up on disk. See the note about on-disk sizes in the
           CAVEATS section below.

       objectname
           The object name (aka SHA-1). For a non-ambiguous abbreviation of the object name append
           :short. For an abbreviation of the object name with desired length append
           :short=<length>, where the minimum length is MINIMUM_ABBREV. The length may be exceeded
           to ensure unique object names.

       deltabase
           This expands to the object name of the delta base for the given object, if it is stored
           as a delta. Otherwise it expands to the null object name (all zeroes).

       upstream
           The name of a local ref which can be considered “upstream” from the displayed ref.
           Respects :short, :lstrip and :rstrip in the same way as refname above. Additionally
           respects :track to show "[ahead N, behind M]" and :trackshort to show the terse version:
           ">" (ahead), "<" (behind), "<>" (ahead and behind), or "=" (in sync).  :track also prints
           "[gone]" whenever unknown upstream ref is encountered. Append :track,nobracket to show
           tracking information without brackets (i.e "ahead N, behind M").

           For any remote-tracking branch %(upstream), %(upstream:remotename) and
           %(upstream:remoteref) refer to the name of the remote and the name of the tracked remote
           ref, respectively. In other words, the remote-tracking branch can be updated explicitly
           and individually by using the refspec %(upstream:remoteref):%(upstream) to fetch from
           %(upstream:remotename).

           Has no effect if the ref does not have tracking information associated with it. All the
           options apart from nobracket are mutually exclusive, but if used together the last option
           is selected.

       push
           The name of a local ref which represents the @{push} location for the displayed ref.
           Respects :short, :lstrip, :rstrip, :track, :trackshort, :remotename, and :remoteref
           options as upstream does. Produces an empty string if no @{push} ref is configured.

       HEAD
           * if HEAD matches current ref (the checked out branch), ' ' otherwise.

       color
           Change output color. Followed by :<colorname>, where color names are described under
           Values in the "CONFIGURATION FILE" section of git-config(1). For example, %(color:bold
           red).

       align
           Left-, middle-, or right-align the content between %(align:...) and %(end). The "align:"
           is followed by width=<width> and position=<position> in any order separated by a comma,
           where the <position> is either left, right or middle, default being left and <width> is
           the total length of the content with alignment. For brevity, the "width=" and/or
           "position=" prefixes may be omitted, and bare <width> and <position> used instead. For
           instance, %(align:<width>,<position>). If the contents length is more than the width then
           no alignment is performed. If used with --quote everything in between %(align:...) and
           %(end) is quoted, but if nested then only the topmost level performs quoting.

       if
           Used as %(if)...%(then)...%(end) or %(if)...%(then)...%(else)...%(end). If there is an
           atom with value or string literal after the %(if) then everything after the %(then) is
           printed, else if the %(else) atom is used, then everything after %(else) is printed. We
           ignore space when evaluating the string before %(then), this is useful when we use the
           %(HEAD) atom which prints either "*" or " " and we want to apply the if condition only on
           the HEAD ref. Append ":equals=<string>" or ":notequals=<string>" to compare the value
           between the %(if:...) and %(then) atoms with the given string.

       symref
           The ref which the given symbolic ref refers to. If not a symbolic ref, nothing is
           printed. Respects the :short, :lstrip and :rstrip options in the same way as refname
           above.

       worktreepath
           The absolute path to the worktree in which the ref is checked out, if it is checked out
           in any linked worktree. Empty string otherwise.

       In addition to the above, for commit and tag objects, the header field names (tree, parent,
       object, type, and tag) can be used to specify the value in the header field. Fields tree and
       parent can also be used with modifier :short and :short=<length> just like objectname.

       For commit and tag objects, the special creatordate and creator fields will correspond to the
       appropriate date or name-email-date tuple from the committer or tagger fields depending on
       the object type. These are intended for working on a mix of annotated and lightweight tags.

       Fields that have name-email-date tuple as its value (author, committer, and tagger) can be
       suffixed with name, email, and date to extract the named component. For email fields
       (authoremail, committeremail and taggeremail), :trim can be appended to get the email without
       angle brackets, and :localpart to get the part before the @ symbol out of the trimmed email.

       The raw data in an object is raw.

       raw:size
           The raw data size of the object.

       Note that --format=%(raw) can not be used with --python, --shell, --tcl, because such
       language may not support arbitrary binary data in their string variable type.

       The message in a commit or a tag object is contents, from which contents:<part> can be used
       to extract various parts out of:

       contents:size
           The size in bytes of the commit or tag message.

       contents:subject
           The first paragraph of the message, which typically is a single line, is taken as the
           "subject" of the commit or the tag message. Instead of contents:subject, field subject
           can also be used to obtain same results.  :sanitize can be appended to subject for
           subject line suitable for filename.

       contents:body
           The remainder of the commit or the tag message that follows the "subject".

       contents:signature
           The optional GPG signature of the tag.

       contents:lines=N
           The first N lines of the message.

       Additionally, the trailers as interpreted by git-interpret-trailers(1) are obtained as
       trailers[:options] (or by using the historical alias contents:trailers[:options]). For valid
       [:option] values see trailers section of git-log(1).

       For sorting purposes, fields with numeric values sort in numeric order (objectsize,
       authordate, committerdate, creatordate, taggerdate). All other fields are used to sort in
       their byte-value order.

       There is also an option to sort by versions, this can be done by using the fieldname
       version:refname or its alias v:refname.

       In any case, a field name that refers to a field inapplicable to the object referred by the
       ref does not cause an error. It returns an empty string instead.

       As a special case for the date-type fields, you may specify a format for the date by adding :
       followed by date format name (see the values the --date option to git-rev-list(1) takes).

       Some atoms like %(align) and %(if) always require a matching %(end). We call them "opening
       atoms" and sometimes denote them as %($open).

       When a scripting language specific quoting is in effect, everything between a top-level
       opening atom and its matching %(end) is evaluated according to the semantics of the opening
       atom and only its result from the top-level is quoted.

EXAMPLES
       An example directly producing formatted text. Show the most recent 3 tagged commits:

           #!/bin/sh

           git for-each-ref --count=3 --sort='-*authordate' \
           --format='From: %(*authorname) %(*authoremail)
           Subject: %(*subject)
           Date: %(*authordate)
           Ref: %(*refname)

           %(*body)
           ' 'refs/tags'


       A simple example showing the use of shell eval on the output, demonstrating the use of
       --shell. List the prefixes of all heads:

           #!/bin/sh

           git for-each-ref --shell --format="ref=%(refname)" refs/heads | \
           while read entry
           do
                   eval "$entry"
                   echo `dirname $ref`
           done


       A bit more elaborate report on tags, demonstrating that the format may be an entire script:

           #!/bin/sh

           fmt='
                   r=%(refname)
                   t=%(*objecttype)
                   T=${r#refs/tags/}

                   o=%(*objectname)
                   n=%(*authorname)
                   e=%(*authoremail)
                   s=%(*subject)
                   d=%(*authordate)
                   b=%(*body)

                   kind=Tag
                   if test "z$t" = z
                   then
                           # could be a lightweight tag
                           t=%(objecttype)
                           kind="Lightweight tag"
                           o=%(objectname)
                           n=%(authorname)
                           e=%(authoremail)
                           s=%(subject)
                           d=%(authordate)
                           b=%(body)
                   fi
                   echo "$kind $T points at a $t object $o"
                   if test "z$t" = zcommit
                   then
                           echo "The commit was authored by $n $e
           at $d, and titled

               $s

           Its message reads as:
           "
                           echo "$b" | sed -e "s/^/    /"
                           echo
                   fi
           '

           eval=`git for-each-ref --shell --format="$fmt" \
                   --sort='*objecttype' \
                   --sort=-taggerdate \
                   refs/tags`
           eval "$eval"


       An example to show the usage of %(if)...%(then)...%(else)...%(end). This prefixes the current
       branch with a star.

           git for-each-ref --format="%(if)%(HEAD)%(then)* %(else)  %(end)%(refname:short)" refs/heads/


       An example to show the usage of %(if)...%(then)...%(end). This prints the authorname, if
       present.

           git for-each-ref --format="%(refname)%(if)%(authorname)%(then) Authored by: %(authorname)%(end)"


CAVEATS
       Note that the sizes of objects on disk are reported accurately, but care should be taken in
       drawing conclusions about which refs or objects are responsible for disk usage. The size of a
       packed non-delta object may be much larger than the size of objects which delta against it,
       but the choice of which object is the base and which is the delta is arbitrary and is subject
       to change during a repack.

       Note also that multiple copies of an object may be present in the object database; in this
       case, it is undefined which copy’s size or delta base will be reported.

NOTES
       When combining multiple --contains and --no-contains filters, only references that contain at
       least one of the --contains commits and contain none of the --no-contains commits are shown.

       When combining multiple --merged and --no-merged filters, only references that are reachable
       from at least one of the --merged commits and from none of the --no-merged commits are shown.

SEE ALSO
       git-show-ref(1)

GIT
       Part of the git(1) suite



Git 2.34.1                                   02/26/2026                          GIT-FOR-EACH-REF(1)