How to find and restore a deleted file in a Git repository

Question

Say I\'m in a Git repository. I delete a file and commit that change. I continue working and make some more commits. Then, I find I need to restore that file.

I know

Answer 1

Find the last commit that affected the given path. As the file isn't in the HEAD commit, this commit must have deleted it.

git rev-list -n 1 HEAD -- 

Then checkout the version at the commit before, using the caret (^) symbol:

git checkout ^ -- 

Or in one command, if $file is the file in question.

git checkout $(git rev-list -n 1 HEAD -- "$file")^ -- "$file"

---

If you are using zsh and have the EXTENDED_GLOB option enabled, the caret symbol won't work. You can use ~1 instead.

git checkout $(git rev-list -n 1 HEAD -- "$file")~1 -- "$file"