View a file in a different Git branch without changing branches

This should work:

git show branch:file

Where branch can be any ref (branch, tag, HEAD, ...) and file is the full path of the file. To export it you could use

git show branch:file > exported_file

You should also look at VonC's answers to some related questions:

UPDATE 2015-01-19:

Nowadays you can use relative paths with git show a1b35:./file.txt.

A simple, newbie friendly way for looking into a file: git gui browser <branch> which lets you explore the contents of any file.

It's also there in the File menu of git gui. Most other -more advanced- GUI wrappers (Qgit, Egit, etc..) offer browsing/opening files as well.

git show somebranch:path/to/your/file

you can also do multiple files and have them concatenated:

git show branchA~10:fileA branchB^^:fileB

You do not have to provide the full path to the file, relative paths are acceptable e.g.:

git show branchA~10:../src/hello.c

If you want to get the file in the local directory (revert just one file) you can checkout:

git checkout somebranch^^^ -- path/to/file

Related