Here is a Git trick I learned a long time ago that I can’t live without (and when I say no one knows about it, I mean it – it is not well documented, and no developers I have worked with knew about it):
Some git commands take – (dash) as the reference to the previous branch.
git checkout and git merge are two commands I use it with all the time.
git checkout – switches to the previous branch. This makes toggling between the two most recently used branches quick and super easy:
git merge – merges the previous branch to the current branch. It is especially powerful when combined with git checkout -. You can switch to the target branch and then merge from the previous branch like this:
One command I wish supported – is git branch -d. It would make cleaning branches after merging effortless. Presumably, this option is not available to prevent accidentally deleting the wrong branches.
Bonus trick
While we are at it – did you know that the cd (change directory) shell command also supports -? You can use cd – to toggle between the two most recent directories.
💙 If you liked this article…
I publish a weekly newsletter for software engineers who want to grow their careers. I share mistakes I’ve made and lessons I’ve learned over the past 20 years as a software engineer.
Sign up here to get my articles delivered to your inbox.
Attribution: Git Logo by Jason Long, source: https://git-scm.com/downloads/logos
