How do I find the most recent git commit that modified a file?

Question

I want to find the most recent commit that modified a source file.

I can use git blame to see all the dates for commits by each line, but it’s difficu

Answer 1

git log supports looking at the history of specific files (and directories), so you can call it like this:

git log my/file.c

If you really only want to list the one most recent commit, for example to use it in a script, use the -n 1 option:

git log -n 1 --pretty=format:%H -- my/file.c

--pretty=format:%h tells git log to show only the commit hash. The -- separater stops the file name from getting interpreted as a commit name, just in case it's ambiguous.