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How to read git index file and extract all paths to text file?

except

git ls-files > out.txt

I mean using other things like regex or something else?

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  • Depends on Operating System, but you can pipe output on linux and mac stackoverflow.com/questions/6674327/redirect-all-output-to-file
    – online Thomas
    Commented Nov 29, 2015 at 17:29
  • "I mean using other things like regex or something else?" The index file itself is a binary file; before regex can be applied to filter the data, the file's contents must first be parsed into readable format, and the git ls-files command does exactly that. What exactly speaks against using the git command?
    – Matthias Fischer
    Commented Nov 29, 2015 at 19:02
  • Unless I'm misunderstanding what you're trying to do, git ls-files > out.txt should do exactly what you want - it reads the contents of the index file in the current git branch and saves them into a text file, in this case out.txt. Have you tried using that command, and if so, can you explain how the command's output differs from what you're trying to obtain?
    – Matthias Fischer
    Commented Nov 29, 2015 at 19:59
  • Do you have git installed on your machine? Without git, it's likely a hassle to try to convert the index file into readable format (according to this thread). If you do have git installed, simply create a new repository, then copy your index file into the repository and overwrite the existing one. After you've done that, you can read the file using git ls-files - I just tried it myself.
    – Matthias Fischer
    Commented Nov 29, 2015 at 20:37

1 Answer 1

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To see the content of the index file, use the command git ls-files.
Assuming you're on either Windows, Linux, or Mac, you can reroute the command's output into a text file by using git ls-files > out.txt.

See: What does the git index contain EXACTLY?

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