Manual: git-symbolic-ref

GIT-SYMBOLIC-REF(1)				 Git Manual				 GIT-SYMBOLIC-REF(1)

NAME
       git-symbolic-ref - Read, modify and delete symbolic refs

SYNOPSIS
       git symbolic-ref [-m ]  
       git symbolic-ref [-q] [--short] [--no-recurse] 
       git symbolic-ref --delete [-q] 

DESCRIPTION
       Given one argument, reads which branch head the given symbolic ref refers to and outputs its path,
       relative to the .git/ directory. Typically you would give HEAD as the  argument to see which
       branch your working tree is on.

       Given two arguments, creates or updates a symbolic ref  to point at the given branch .

       Given --delete and an additional argument, deletes the given symbolic ref.

       A symbolic ref is a regular file that stores a string that begins with ref: refs/. For example, your
       .git/HEAD is a regular file whose content is ref: refs/heads/master.

OPTIONS
       -d, --delete
	   Delete the symbolic ref .

       -q, --quiet
	   Do not issue an error message if the  is not a symbolic ref but a detached HEAD; instead
	   exit with non-zero status silently.

       --short
	   When showing the value of  as a symbolic ref, try to shorten the value, e.g. from
	   refs/heads/master to master.

       --recurse, --no-recurse
	   When showing the value of  as a symbolic ref, if  refers to another symbolic ref,
	   follow such a chain of symbolic refs until the result no longer points at a symbolic ref
	   (--recurse, which is the default).  --no-recurse stops after dereferencing only a single level of
	   symbolic ref.

       -m
	   Update the reflog for  with . This is valid only when creating or updating a
	   symbolic ref.

NOTES
       In the past, .git/HEAD was a symbolic link pointing at refs/heads/master. When we wanted to switch to
       another branch, we did ln -sf refs/heads/newbranch .git/HEAD, and when we wanted to find out which
       branch we are on, we did readlink .git/HEAD. But symbolic links are not entirely portable, so they
       are now deprecated and symbolic refs (as described above) are used by default.

       git symbolic-ref will exit with status 0 if the contents of the symbolic ref were printed correctly,
       with status 1 if the requested name is not a symbolic ref, or 128 if another error occurs.

SEE ALSO
       git-update-ref(1)

GIT
       Part of the git(1) suite

Git 2.53.0					 03/02/2026				 GIT-SYMBOLIC-REF(1)