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Lucian Ghinda
Lucian Ghinda

Posted on • Originally published at notes.ghinda.com

Bash one line to display git commit message without indentation

I like to write explanatory git commit messages and if the PR/MR has one single commit, I use the commit message as the body of the Pull Request/Merge Request.

Using the simple git log command displays the commit message but has some padding/indentation:

Screenshot of git log command

There is a way to fix this by specifying the format:



git log -1 --pretty='format:%s%n%n%b'


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Image with the output when executing a git command with format

Where:

  • %s is the subject of the commit message (the first line)
  • %n is adding a new line (so I am adding two)
  • %b is the body of the commit message

You can make these bash aliases:



alias .lastmsg="git log -1 --pretty='format:%s%n%n%b'"


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And in case of MacOS you can directly copy the last message to clipboard:



alias .cplastmsg="git log -1 --pretty='format:%s%n%n%b' | pbcopy"


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