View a file in a different Git branch without changing branches

git version-control branch git-branch
Schneems picture Schneems · Oct 22, 2011 · Viewed 147.5k times · Source

Is it possible to open a file in a git branch without checking out that branch? How?

Essentially I want to be able to open a file in my github pages branch without switching branches all the time. I don't want to modify it, just want to view it.

Answer

Scolytus picture Scolytus · Oct 22, 2011

This should work:

git show branch:file

Where branch can be any ref (branch, tag, HEAD, ...) and file is the full path of the file. To export it you could use

git show branch:file > exported_file

You should also look at VonC's answers to some related questions:

UPDATE 2015-01-19:

Nowadays you can use relative paths with git show a1b35:./file.txt.

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