Move the most recent commit(s) to a new branch with Git

Question

I\'d like to move the last several commits I\'ve committed to master to a new branch and take master back to before those commits were made. Unfortunately, my Git-fu is not

Answer 1

For those wondering why it works (as I was at first):

You want to go back to C, and move D and E to the new branch. Here's what it looks like at first:

A-B-C-D-E (HEAD)
        ↑
      master

After git branch newBranch:

    newBranch
        ↓
A-B-C-D-E (HEAD)
        ↑
      master

After git reset --hard HEAD~2:

    newBranch
        ↓
A-B-C-D-E (HEAD)
    ↑
  master

Since a branch is just a pointer, master pointed to the last commit. When you made newBranch, you simply made a new pointer to the last commit. Then using git reset you moved the master pointer back two commits. But since you didn't move newBranch, it still points to the commit it originally did.