One of the Most Useful Git Features

A while ago a colleague introduced me to a shortcut in git that improved my productivity tremendously: the - placeholder.

If you use a Unix-like operating system you already know how useful - is — it represents stdin/stdout in pipelines, or the previous directory in the shell. The cd - trick is also available in git: - refers to the previously checked-out branch.

There are plenty of situations where I need to quickly switch to a branch and then back. Previously I had to remember and retype the branch name. With - I can just run:

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git checkout -

This not only saves typing but is also useful for writing scripts that are agnostic to the current branch.