Programmatically get number of stashes in git

Question

My "oldest" stash in a project is something I need to re-apply from time to time. (Yes, there's a reason for this, and yes, it's terrible, but fixing the underlying issue would be more time-consuming than just using git stash for now.)

However, the oldest stash has the highest number in the list, so I can't apply it without first using git stash list to see what number it is.

Is there some way to make Git print the number of stashes it's currently holding, so that something like this would always print the last stash (in a shell supporting this kind of command-interpolation)?

git stash apply $(git stash <count-command>)

I realize I can use something like this:

 git stash list | tail -1 | awk '{print $1}' | grep -oP '\d+'

...but that's pretty hideous, so I'd like to know if there's something simpler.

You could just define a short alias for your "hideous" working solution, no? — cody, Dec 17 '18 at 21:46
Any reason why you're not using a branch with a single commit, that you could cherry-pick? — alfunx, Dec 17 '18 at 22:07
@cody Yes, but I would rather have something I can easily remember in case I'm working somewhere without my `.bashrc` setup. — Kyle Strand, Dec 17 '18 at 23:50
@alfunx No; that may be a better idea than abusing the stash-list. Thanks! — Kyle Strand, Dec 17 '18 at 23:51
@alfunx I don't see any way to apply a commit from a branch without creating a new commit (or possibly just fast-forwarding). I don't want that. — Kyle Strand, Dec 18 '18 at 23:10
@KyleStrand There is a flag called `--no-commit` (or shorter `-n`) for the `cherry-pick` command. — alfunx, Dec 18 '18 at 23:14

A.H. · Accepted Answer · 2018-12-17T23:07:44.170

11

Given a small sample repository with this stashes:

> git stash list
stash@{0}: WIP on foo/master: d9184b5 ...
stash@{1}: WIP on foo/master: d9184b5 ...

this gives you the number of stash entries:

> git rev-list --walk-reflogs --count refs/stash
2

But you have to substract 1 to get the last entry :-( Thanks to @alfunx that can be done without shell arithmetic:

> git rev-list --walk-reflogs --count --skip 1 refs/stash
1

But to get the oldest stash ref directly you can use this:

> git log --walk-reflogs --pretty="%gd" refs/stash | tail -1
stash@{1}

This works in your case, because git stash apply supports both a plain number and stash@{$NUMBER} as an identifier for a stash.

edited Dec 17 '18 at 23:07

answered Dec 17 '18 at 22:09

A.H.

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You could `--skip 1` to have one subtracted from the count. – alfunx Dec 17 '18 at 22:19
@alfunx Excellent! Thanks! – A.H. Dec 17 '18 at 22:59
This answers the asker's question, but worth noting `git rev-list --walk-reflogs --count refs/stash` raises an error when there are no stashes. – Orez Jul 20 '22 at 12:49

score 6 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 18 '21 at 18:51

6

The given solutions are over-complicated.

A simple solution is just to count the number of lines given by git stash list

$ git stash list | wc -l
     65

answered Mar 18 '21 at 18:51

donatJ

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Except that it doesn't work in Windows, whereas all the other solutions are cross platform. – Johnny Oshika Mar 28 '21 at 15:39

Mad Physicist · Answer 3 · 2018-12-18T23:50:49.183

3

Since your stash is just a single commit, you do not strictly speaking need to use a stash mechanism. Once you know the SHA of your stash once, you can either cherry-pick it every time by SHA, or add a tag to it so you can cherry-pick it by label.

When cherry-picking, use the -n or --no-commit flag.

edited Dec 18 '18 at 23:50

answered Dec 17 '18 at 22:13

Mad Physicist

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I forgot about tagging commits without introducing new branches. Thanks! – Kyle Strand Dec 17 '18 at 23:52
I think my post is the answer to the actual question but this post solves the actual problem :-) – A.H. Dec 18 '18 at 20:23
@A.H. Agreed. +1 regardless – Mad Physicist Dec 18 '18 at 20:24
I'm actually not sure this is ideal, because I _don't_ want to include the changes as a new commit on my working branch; I want to be able to push my commits _without_ including the changes. – Kyle Strand Dec 18 '18 at 23:08
@Kyle You can always soft reset the cherry picked commit – Mad Physicist Dec 18 '18 at 23:37
@Kyle. Updated answer with https://stackoverflow.com/q/32333383/2988730 – Mad Physicist Dec 18 '18 at 23:49

Programmatically get number of stashes in git

3 Answers3