til/git/get-latest-commit-timestamp-for-a-file.md

Get Latest Commit Timestamp For A File

The git log command can tell you all the commits that touched a file. That can be narrowed down to the latest commit for that file with the -1 flag. The commit that it reports can then be further formatted to with the --format flag.

The %ai format pattern gives the date the commit was authored in an ISO 8601-like format. The %aI (capital I) gives the date the commit was authored strictly in the ISO 8601 format.

Here are examples of both side by side:

❯ git log -1 --format=%ai -- README.md
2024-10-15 13:59:09 -0500

❯ git log -1 --format=%aI -- README.md
2024-10-15T13:59:09-05:00

I made use of this in a script where I needed to get an idea of when various files were most recently modified.

See man git-log and the PRETTY FORMATS section for more details.