Re: VCS comparison table

On 10/17/06, Linus Torvalds [off-list ref] wrote:

So then you can do just

        git cat todo:TODO

and you're done.

[ So for the non-git people, what that will actually _do_ is to show the
  TODO file in the "todo" branch - regardless of whether it is checked out
  or not, and start a pager for you. ]

I actually do this sometimes, but I've never done it for branches (and I
do it seldom enough that I haven't added the alias). I do it for things
like

        git cat v2.6.16:Makefile

to see what a file looked like in a certain tagged release.

This very useful syntax (<ent>:<path>) didn't get documented
"officially" anywhere. It was actually documented in commit log
v1.4.1^0~255^2. Maybe someone should copy and paste it to git
documentation? Maybe core-tutorial.txt or git-rev-parse.txt, is there
any better place?
-- 
Duy