mixu/find-old-files.sh

Created September 4, 2014 21:02

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Find oldest files in a git repo

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find-old-files.sh

	git ls-tree -r --name-only HEAD \| while read filename; do
	echo "$(git log -1 --format="%at \| %h \| %an \| %ad \|" -- $filename) $filename"
	done

sastorsl commented Nov 28, 2025

To not have to handle filenames at all in references one can use the object SHA.

Also sending the output to a file for easy sorting and search without having to run the same query many times.

git ls-tree -r HEAD | head | while read MODE TYPE SHA FILENAME; do
  echo $(git log -1 --all --find-object=${SHA} --format="%ad | %h | %an <%ae> |" --date=iso-strict) "${FILENAME}"
done | tee tmpfile.txt

Sort and search

# oldest last
sort -r tmpfile.txt

# find a specific file
grep gitignore tmpfile.txt

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