Git: How to find a deleted file in the project commit history?

If you do not know the exact path you may use

git log --all --full-history -- "**/thefile.*"

If you know the path the file was at, you can do this:

git log --all --full-history -- <path-to-file>

This should show a list of commits in all branches which touched that file. Then, you can find the version of the file you want, and display it with...

git show <SHA> -- <path-to-file>

Or restore it into your working copy with:

git checkout <SHA>^ -- <path-to-file>

Note the caret symbol (^), which gets the checkout prior to the one identified, because at the moment of <SHA> commit the file is deleted, we need to look at the previous commit to get the deleted file's contents

Get a list of the deleted files and copy the full path of the deleted file

git log --diff-filter=D --summary | grep delete

Execute the next command to find commit id of that commit and copy the commit id

git log --all -- FILEPATH

Show diff of deleted file

git show COMMIT_ID -- FILE_PATH

Remember, you can write output to a file using > like

git show COMMIT_ID -- FILE_PATH > deleted.diff

Suppose you want to recover a file called MyFile, but are uncertain of its path (or its extension, for that matter):

Preliminary: Avoid confusion by stepping to the git root

A nontrivial project may have multiple directories with similar or identical filenames.

> cd <project-root>

1. Find the full path

   git log --diff-filter=D --summary | grep delete | grep MyFile

   delete mode 100644 full/path/to/MyFile.js

full/path/to/MyFile.js is the path & file you're seeking.

2. Determine all the commits that affected that file

   git log --oneline --follow -- full/path/to/MyFile.js

   bd8374c Some helpful commit message

   ba8d20e Another prior commit message affecting that file

   cfea812 The first message for a commit in which that file appeared.

3. Checkout the file

If you choose the first-listed commit (the last chronologically, here bd8374c), the file will not be found, since it was deleted in that commit.

> git checkout bd8374c -- full/path/to/MyFile.js

`error: pathspec 'full/path/to/MyFile.js' did not match any file(s) known to git.`

Just select the preceding (append a caret) commit:

> git checkout bd8374c^ -- full/path/to/MyFile.js