What is the difference between “git reset --hard” and “git checkout .”?

Question

When I want some changes in my project and I want to return to the state of the last commit, I can use these both options. Do they actually do the same thing or is there any

Answer 1

There are same if you don't follow them with any commit id i.e. they resets your state to the latest commit. However if you do reset --hard , it changes the HEAD of your current branch to commit id specified, whereas checkout creates a temporary branch.

git checkout 6a0ff74 
# would create a temp branch with its HEAD pointed to commit id
# you can just checkout your original branch.

git reset --head 6a0ff74
# would change the `HEAD` of the current branch. To reverse the change
# you must find the latest commit id and `reset --hard` to it again.