How to list all distinct extensions of tracked files in a git repository?

Question

I'd like to know all distinct extensions of files tracked by git in a given repo, in order to create appropriate .gitattributes file.

Example output expected:

bat
gitignore
gradle
html
jar
java
js
json
md
png
properties
py
svg
webp
xml
yml

What command can I use for that?

Answer 1

git ls-tree -r HEAD --name-only | perl -ne 'print $1 if m/\.([^.\/]+)$/' | sort -u 

When you declare it as an alias, you have to escape $1 :

alias gitFileExtensions="git ls-tree -r HEAD --name-only | perl -ne 'print \$1 if m/\.([^.\/]+)$/' | sort -u"

This is better than naive find , because:

• it excludes untracked (gitignored) files
• it excludes .git directory which contains usually hundreds/thousands of files and hence slows down the search

(inspired by How can I find all of the distinct file extensions in a folder hierarchy? )

Answer 2

If you have access to PowerShell, here is a nice one-liner which also gives you the count of how many files exist of each type:

$ext = @{}; git ls-tree -r HEAD --name-only | Get-Item | %{ $ext[$_.Extension]++ }; $ext