How to find and restore a deleted file in a Git repository

git file-io git-checkout

Find the last commit that affected the given path. As the file isn't in the HEAD commit, this commit must have deleted it.

git rev-list -n 1 HEAD -- <file_path>

Then checkout the version at the commit before, using the caret (^) symbol:

git checkout <deleting_commit>^ -- <file_path>

Or in one command, if $file is the file in question.

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

If you are using zsh and have the EXTENDED_GLOB option enabled, the caret symbol won't work. You can use ~1 instead.

git checkout $(git rev-list -n 1 HEAD -- "$file")~1 -- "$file"

git file-io git-checkout

Use git log --diff-filter=D --summary to get all the commits which have deleted files and the files deleted;
Use git checkout $commit~1 path/to/file.ext to restore the deleted file.

Where $commit is the value of the commit you've found at step 1, e.g. e4cf499627

git file-io git-checkout

To restore all those deleted files in a folder, enter the following command.

git ls-files -d | xargs git checkout --

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