Reset File Changes with git

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There are many different philosophies when it comes to code review but mine is fairly simple:  I like receiving early "work in progress" patches, I like to be positive in my code review messages, and if a patch is 90% there, I like to finish the patch myself so the project and contributor both benefit.

Every once in while, however, a patch comes in with an unrelated file change or code added to the wrong file, in which case I need to reset a file's contents before the change commit.  You can restore a file's contents before a patch with the following:

git reset origin/master path/to/file-to-be-changed.ext

Once this shell snippet is executed, the file's contents are restored and can be re-commited to restore the file contents.

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Discussion

  1. Wouldn’t

    git checkout path/to/file

    achieve the same?

Wrap your code in <pre class="{language}"></pre> tags, link to a GitHub gist, JSFiddle fiddle, or CodePen pen to embed!