15

I performed a fresh clone and copied/pasted a working directory into the cloned directory. Now have a list of changed files:

$ git status --short | grep -v "??" | cut -d " " -f 3 
GNUmakefile
Readme.txt
base32.h
base64.h
...

When I try to get Git to add them, it results in an error (I don't care about adding 1 at a time):

$ git status --short | grep -v "??" | cut -d " " -f 3 | git add
Nothing specified, nothing added.
Maybe you wanted to say 'git add .'?

Adding the -:

$ git status --short | grep -v "??" | cut -d " " -f 3 | git add -
fatal: pathspec '-' did not match any files

And --:

$ git status --short | grep -v "??" | cut -d " " -f 3 | git add --
Nothing specified, nothing added.
Maybe you wanted to say 'git add .'?

Trying to use interactive from the man page appears to have made a greater mess of things:

$ git status --short | grep -v "??" | cut -d " " -f 3 | git add -i
           staged     unstaged path
  1:    unchanged        +1/-1 GNUmakefile
  2:    unchanged      +11/-11 Readme.txt
  ...

*** Commands ***
  1: status   2: update   3: revert   4: add untracked
  5: patch    6: diff     7: quit     8: help
Huh (GNUmakefile)?
What now> *** Commands ***
  1: status   2: update   3: revert   4: add untracked
  5: patch    6: diff     7: quit     8: help
Huh (Readme.txt)?

(I've already deleted the directory Git made a mess of, so I'm not trying to solve that issue).

How do I tell Git to add the files piped into it?

7 Answers7

19

git add is expecting the files to be listed as arguments, not piped into stdin. Try either

git status --short | grep -v "??" | cut -d " " -f 3 | xargs git add

or

for file in $(git status --short | grep -v "??" | cut -d " " -f 3); do
    git add $file;
done
David King
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4

I used 

git add `cat filelist`

I only had 100 files. 1000s might be problematic.

But maybe not. Use "-n" for a dry run.

Romeo Ninov
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ClubOfRome
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2

If the files were already in the index (i.e. they show up as "modified", as opposed to untracked, when you run 'git status'), Then you can run

git commit -am "Useful commit message here"

This adds all tracked but modified files automatically.

Hack Saw
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0

If you're using ag or ack, this is what works:

ag -l PATTERN | xargs git add

joachim
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0

Similar to David King's:

git status --short | perl -lane '$F[0] == "M" and print $F[1]' | xargs -n 20 git add

That example finds files only in the Modified state, and adds them. To guard against very long parameter lists, xargs uses the -n 20 parameter to limit each call to git to 20 files.

Change the match condition in the perl script as needed. Another example:

| perl -lane '$F[0] == "M" and $F[1] =~ m/py$/ and print $F[1]' |

That example finds modified Python files (ends with py).

Quantum Mechanic
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0

Say if I wanted to add all .cpp files. You can do it simply by doing

git add $(ls *.cpp)

Just make sure you don't have any space in filenames like

Hello World.cpp //this will not work you have to do git add Hello\ World.cpp
Helloworld.cpp //these filenames will work
Tushar Gupta
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  • Welcome to the site and thank you for your contribution. Apart from the fact that you should [never parse the output of `ls`](https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/128985/why-not-parse-ls-and-what-to-do-instead) (you pointed out why yourself), why do you pipe the output of `ls` through `grep`? You could just say `ls *.cpp`... – AdminBee Aug 18 '20 at 12:06
  • Didn't know about the parsing output of ls thread. No special reason behind using grep, one can do it using it too but sure `ls *.cpp` looks like a better option. Thanks :) – Tushar Gupta Aug 18 '20 at 14:41
0

another flavour...
This one works for me using only shell commands and is a oneliner. Add more filter to the grep stage of pipe to filter out files

git add -- $(git status --short |grep '??' |cut -d' ' -f2| xargs -i sh
-c "printf '%s\n' {}")
Clement
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