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

To restore a deleted and commited file:

git reset HEAD some/path
git checkout -- some/path

It was tested on Git version 1.7.5.4.

Answer 2

If you only made changes and deleted a file, but not commit it, and now you broke up with your changes

git checkout -- .

but your deleted files did not return, you simply do the following command:

git checkout <file_path>

And presto, your file is back.

Answer 3

git checkout /path/to/deleted.file

Answer 4

For the best way to do that, try it.

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First, find the commit id of the commit that deleted your file. It will give you a summary of commits which deleted files.

git log --diff-filter=D --summary

git checkout 84sdhfddbffffdf~1

Note: 84sdhfddbffffd is your commit id

Through this you can easily recover all deleted files.

Answer 5

My new favorite alias, based on bonyiii's answer (upvoted), and my own answer about "Pass an argument to a Git alias command":

git config alias.restore '!f() { git checkout $(git rev-list -n 1 HEAD -- $1)~1 -- $(git diff --name-status $(git rev-list -n 1 HEAD -- $1)~1 | grep '^D' | cut -f 2); }; f'

I have lost a file, deleted by mistake a few commits ago?
Quick:

git restore my_deleted_file

Crisis averted.

Warning, with Git 2.23 (Q3 2019) comes the experimental command named git restore(!).
So rename this alias (as shown below).

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Robert Dailey proposes in the comments the following alias:

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

And jegan adds in the comments:

For setting the alias from the command line, I used this command:

git config --global alias.restore "\!git checkout \$(git rev-list -n 1 HEAD -- \"\$1\")^ -- \"\$1\"" 

Answer 6

I've got this solution.

1. Get the id of the commit where the file was deleted using one of the ways below.

   • git log --grep=*word*
   • git log -Sword
   • git log | grep --context=5 *word*
   • git log --stat | grep --context=5 *word* # recommended if you hardly remember anything

2. You should get something like:

commit bfe68bd117e1091c96d2976c99b3bcc8310bebe7 Author: Alexander Orlov Date: Thu May 12 23:44:27 2011 +0200

replaced deprecated GWT class
- gwtI18nKeySync.sh, an outdated (?, replaced by a Maven goal) I18n generation script

commit 3ea4e3af253ac6fd1691ff6bb89c964f54802302 Author: Alexander Orlov Date: Thu May 12 22:10:22 2011 +0200

3. Now using the commit id bfe68bd117e1091c96d2976c99b3bcc8310bebe7 do:

git checkout bfe68bd117e1091c96d2976c99b3bcc8310bebe7^1 yourDeletedFile.java

As the commit id references the commit where the file was already deleted you need to reference the commit just before bfe68b which you can do by appending ^1. This means: give me the commit just before bfe68b.