git rev-parse --symbolic-full-name --abbrev-ref HEAD
Obtain the name of the current branch
This command is used to interpret the HEAD
as a revision and print its name. It navigates the Git object database and returns the full symbolic name of the current branch.
The --symbolic-full-name
flag tells git to treat the input as a refspec and resolve it to a fully qualified reference name (branch name). The --abbrev-ref
flag abbreviates the full branch name to a human-friendly version.
Variations may include removal of these two flags which will result in printing just the commit hash, or using the --verify
flag to check if the input is a valid revision.