Create string array from git status bash output

Question

I am trying to create a string array of my modified git files so I can use them in a bash program. Sample output:

On branch restructured
Your branch is up-to-date with 'origin/restructured'.

Changes not staged for commit:
  (use "git add <file>..." to update what will be committed)
  (use "git checkout -- <file>..." to discard changes in working directory)

    modified: path/to/file1 
    modified: path/to/file2

I'm tryig to grab the text after modified: but from what I've found grep doesn't support new line so i'm at a loss how I could convert the raw output into something I could work with.

I would suggest starting with git status --porcelain, which is specifically geared towards being easy(-er) to parse... — twalberg
– twalberg, Commented Mar 25, 2014 at 18:21

kojiro · Accepted Answer · 2019-05-28 12:41:05Z

8

If you really just want a list of modified files, consider git ls-files -m. If you need something extensible to potentially other types of changes:

git status --porcelain | while read -r status file; do
  case "$status" in 
    M) printf '%s\n' "$file";;
  esac
done

edited May 28, 2019 at 12:41

answered Mar 25, 2014 at 18:34

kojiro

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bishop · Accepted Answer · 2014-03-25 18:53:42Z

4

How about:

files=(git status | grep '^\s*modified:' | cut -f 2- -d :)

Reading from inside out, that:

Passes git status to grep, which
looks for lines with modified: on them singularly, then
cuts everything after the colon on those lines, then finally
puts that into an array assigned to $files

answered Mar 25, 2014 at 18:53

bishop

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1 Comment

Dave Over a year ago

How about files=$(git ls-files -m)

Dave · Accepted Answer · 2014-03-26 02:11:00Z

You are looking at the problem wrong.

Git "status" is a pretty view derived from a number of underlying commands.

The list of "changed" files is retrieved with

$ git diff --name-only --diff-filter=M
modifiedfile.txt

diff-filter can be:

A Added files
C Copied files
D Deleted files
M Modified files
etc.. check the manual.

You can also try ls-files which supports -d, -m, -a, and -o.

If you are looking for NEW files which are not yet tracked, you can try

$ git ls-files -o
untrackedfile.txt

As a last resort, if you really insist on trying to parse the output from git-status, consider using the '--short' or '--porcelain' output option. --short produces coloured output, which --porcelain avoids.

$ git status --short
 M modifiedfile.txt
?? untrackedfile.txt

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