Formatting
Chester Wyke November 06, 2023 Updated: April 15, 2025 #gitForeword
Source: https://git-scm.com/docs/pretty-formats#Documentation/pretty-formats.txt-emnem
Used to control output for commands like log.
Example
For example to see the last committed date of a file use the following. The -1 means return only the most recent.
NB: Your current directory should be within the repo. Command originally found on SO but link to formatting options was broken so hence this page.
Excerpt from placeholder options
| placeholder | Description |
|---|---|
| %n | newline |
| %% | a raw % |
| %H | commit hash |
| %h | abbreviated commit hash |
| %an | author name |
| %cn | committer name |
| %s | subject |
| %b | body |
| %cd | committer date (format respects –date= option) |
| %cD | committer date, RFC2822 style |
| %cr | committer date, relative |
| %ct | committer date, UNIX timestamp |
| %ci | committer date, ISO 8601-like format |
| %cI | committer date, strict ISO 8601 format |
| %cs | committer date, short format (YYYY-MM-DD) |
| %ch | committer date, human style (like the –date=human option of git-rev-list[1]) |