svn revert file.rb == git checkout — file.rb
You’ve changed a file, but don’t want to commit it. Ever. I do this all the time, maybe disabling a filter so I can hit a page with curl, maybe hard-coding a specific user id to test something. In subversion, you would “revert” that file.
<code>svn revert file.rb</code>
In git, you don’t add that file to your staging area for commit. To make your changes go away forever, you checkout a new copy of that file from HEAD.
<code>git checkout — file.rb</code>
If you omit the –, it will still work, as long as you don’t have a branch named the same as your file. Thanks to Jonathan Dance at norbauer.com – one of the few blog entries I found describing this technique.
2009-04-28 UPDATE – err has a great git cheatsheet that includes this trick under Fixing Mistakes.
