How to tell if a file is git tracked (by shell exit code)?

Question

Is there a way to tell if a file is being tracked by running some git command and checking its exit code?

In other words: is git tracking a file?

Answer 1

try:

git ls-files --error-unmatch <file name> 

will exit with 1 if file is not tracked

Answer 2

If you don't want to clutter up your console with error messages, you can also run

git ls-files file_name 

and then check the result. If git returns nothing, then the file is not tracked. If it's tracked, git will return the file path.

This comes in handy if you want to combine it in a script, for example PowerShell:

$gitResult = (git ls-files $_) | out-string if ($gitResult.length -ne 0) {     ## do stuff with the tracked file }