Documentation / git-cat-file.txton commit [PATCH] Add some simple howtos, culled from the mailing list. (365a00a)
   1git-cat-file(1)
   2===============
   3v0.1, May 2005
   4
   5NAME
   6----
   7git-cat-file - Provide content or type information for repository objects
   8
   9
  10SYNOPSIS
  11--------
  12'git-cat-file' (-t | -s | <type>) <object>
  13
  14DESCRIPTION
  15-----------
  16Provides content or type of objects in the repository. The type
  17is required unless '-t' is used to find the object type,
  18or '-s' is used to find the object size.
  19
  20OPTIONS
  21-------
  22<object>::
  23        The sha1 identifier of the object.
  24
  25-t::
  26        Instead of the content, show the object type identified by
  27        <object>.
  28
  29-s::
  30        Instead of the content, show the object size identified by
  31        <object>.
  32
  33<type>::
  34        Typically this matches the real type of <object> but asking
  35        for a type that can trivially dereferenced from the given
  36        <object> is also permitted.  An example is to ask for a
  37        "tree" with <object> being a commit object that contains it,
  38        or to ask for a "blob" with <object> being a tag object that
  39        points at it.
  40
  41OUTPUT
  42------
  43If '-t' is specified, one of the <type>.  If '-s' is specified,
  44the size of the <object> in bytes.
  45
  46Otherwise the raw (though uncompressed) contents of the <object> will
  47be returned.
  48
  49
  50Author
  51------
  52Written by Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
  53
  54Documentation
  55--------------
  56Documentation by David Greaves, Junio C Hamano and the git-list <git@vger.kernel.org>.
  57
  58GIT
  59---
  60Part of the link:git.html[git] suite
  61