How do I find and restore a deleted file in a Git repository?

Find the last commit that affected the given path. As the file isn't in the HEAD commit, that previous commit must have deleted it.

git rev-list -n 1 HEAD -- <file_path>

Then checkout the version at the commit before, using the caret (^) symbol:

git checkout <deleting_commit>^ -- <file_path>

Or in one command, if $file is the file in question.

git checkout $(git rev-list -n 1 HEAD -- "$file")^ -- "$file"

If you are using zsh and have the EXTENDED_GLOB option enabled, the caret symbol won't work. You can use ~1 instead.

git checkout $(git rev-list -n 1 HEAD -- "$file")~1 -- "$file"

1. Get all the commits which have deleted files, as well as the files that were deleted:

   git log --diff-filter=D --summary
   

   Make note of the desired commit hash, e.g. e4e6d4d5e5c59c69f3bd7be2.

2. Restore the deleted file from one commit prior (~1) to the commit that was determined above (e4e6d4d5e5c59c69f3bd7be2):

   git checkout e4e6d4d5e5c59c69f3bd7be2~1 path/to/file.ext
   

   Note the ~1.

If you’re insane, use git-bisect. Here's what to do:

git bisect start
git bisect bad
git bisect good <some commit where you know the file existed>

Now it's time to run the automated test. The shell command '[ -e foo.bar ]' will return 0 if foo.bar exists, and 1 otherwise. The "run" command of git-bisect will use binary search to automatically find the first commit where the test fails. It starts halfway through the range given (from good to bad) and cuts it in half based on the result of the specified test.

git bisect run '[ -e foo.bar ]'

Now you're at the commit which deleted it. From here, you can jump back to the future and use git-revert to undo the change,

git bisect reset
git revert <the offending commit>

or you could go back one commit and manually inspect the damage:

git checkout HEAD^
cp foo.bar /tmp
git bisect reset
cp /tmp/foo.bar .

Actually, this question is directly about Git, but somebody like me works with GUI tools like the WebStorm VCS other than knowing about Git CLI commands.

I right click on the path that contains the deleted file, and then go to Git and then click on Show History.

The VCS tools show all revisions train and I can see all commits and changes of each of them.

Then I select the commits that my friend delete the PostAd.js file. now see below:

And now, I can see my desire deleted file. I just double-click on the filename and it recovers.

I know my answer is not Git commands, but it is fast, reliable and easy for beginner and professional developers. WebStorm VCS tools are awesome and perfect for working with Git and it doesn't need any other plugin or tools.

I had to restore a bunch of deleted files from a specific commit, and I managed it with two commands:

git show <rev> --diff-filter=D --summary --name-only --no-commit-id | xargs git checkout <rev>^ -- 
git show <rev> --diff-filter=D --summary --name-only --no-commit-id | xargs git reset HEAD 

(Note the trailing space on the end of each command.)

The files had been added to the .gitignore file and then cleared with git rm. I needed to restore the files, but then unstage them. I had hundreds of files to restore, and typing things manually for each file as in the other examples was going to be far too slow.

Find the commit that deleted your file:

git log --diff-filter=D --oneline -- path/to/file | cut -f -d ' '

Sample output:

4711174

As of Git 2.23 there is actually a restore command. It is still experimental but in order to restore something you removed in a commit (4711174 in this case) you can then type:

git restore --source=4711174^ path/to/file

Note the ^ after the commit id as we want to restore something from the commit before the one that deleted the file.

The --source argument tells the restore command where to look for the file(s) to restore and it can be any commit and even the index.

See: git-restore doc for git 2.23.0

Plus point: The below methods does work good for the scenario that files/folders got deleted even from your Trash or Recycle bin.

Files/Folders are deleted from working tree but not committed yet:

I. If you have not yet indexed (git add) your changes you can revert content of a directory:

git restore -- path/to/folder_OR_file

II. If the deletion is already indexed, you should reset that first:

git reset -- path/to/folder_OR_file

then perform, git restore path/to/folder_OR_file

Files/Folders are deleted in some commit in the past:

1. Use git log --diff-filter=D --summary to get details of the commits in which files/folder were deleted;
2. Use git checkout $commit~1 path/to/folder_OR_file to restore the deleted files/folder. Where $commit is the sha-value of the commit you've found at step 1, e.g. c7578994

For the best way to do that, try it.

First, find the commit id of the commit that deleted your file. It will give you a summary of commits which deleted files.

git log --diff-filter=D --summary

git checkout 84sdhfddbdddf~1

Note: 84sdhfddbddd is your commit id

Through this you can easily recover all deleted files.

Simple and precise-

First of all, get a latest stable commit in which you have that file by -

git log 

Say you find $commitid 1234567..., then

git checkout <$commitid> $fileName

This will restore the file version which was in that commit.

This is the easiest solution I found if you want just restore the same file in master:

git checkout master -- path/to/File.java

You could always git revert your commit which deleted the file. (This assumes that the deletion was the only change in the commit.)

> git log
commit 2994bda49cd97ce49099953fc3f76f7d3c35d1d3
Author: Dave <dave@domain.com>
Date:   Thu May 9 11:11:06 2019 -0700

    deleted readme.md

And if you've continued work, and realized later that you didn't want to commit that deletion commit, you could revert it using:

> git revert 2994bd

Now git log shows:

> git log
Author: Dave <dave@domain.com>
Date:   Thu May 9 11:17:41 2019 -0700

    Revert "deleted readme"

    This reverts commit 2994bda49cd97ce49099953fc3f76f7d3c35d1d3.

And readme.md has been restored into the repository.

I also have this problem using the below code to retrieve a previous file to a local directory:

git checkout <file path with name>

The below example is working for me:

git checkout resources/views/usaSchools.blade.php

If the deletion has not been committed, the command below will restore the deleted file in the working tree.

$ git checkout -- <file>

You can get a list of all the deleted files in the working tree using the command below.

$ git ls-files --deleted

If the deletion has been committed, find the commit where it happened, then recover the file from this commit.

$ git rev-list -n 1 HEAD -- <file>
$ git checkout <commit>^ -- <file>

In case you are looking for the path of the file to recover, the following command will display a summary of all deleted files.

$ git log --diff-filter=D --summary

You can checkout deleted files:

git checkout

Output

D       index.html

To restore it:

git restore index.html

If you deleted multi files and you need to restore all use:

git restore .

See Gif image

$ git log --diff-filter=D --summary  | grep "delete" | sort

In order to restore all deleted file with Git, you can also do:

git checkout $(git ls-files --deleted)

Where git ls-files --deleted lists all deleted files and git checkout $(git command) restores the list of files in a parameter.