How to Get the Name of the Current Git Branch into a Variable in a Shell Script

How to get the name of the current git branch into a variable in a shell script?

The * is expanded, what you can do is use sed instead of grep and get the name of the branch immediately:

branch=$(git branch | sed -n -e 's/^\* \(.*\)/\1/p')

And a version using git symbolic-ref, as suggested by Noufal Ibrahim

branch=$(git symbolic-ref HEAD | sed -e 's,.*/\(.*\),\1,')

To elaborate on the expansion, (as marco already did,) the expansion happens in the echo, when you do echo $test with $test containing * master then the * is expanded according to the normal expansion rules. To suppress this one would have to quote the variable, as shown by marco: echo "$test". Alternatively, if you get rid of the asterisk before you echo it, all will be fine, e.g. echo ${test:2} will just echo master. Alternatively you could assign it anew as you already proposed:

branch=${test:2}
echo $branch

This will echo master, like you wanted.

How to get the current git branch in shell

To get the name of the current branch: git rev-parse --abbrev-ref HEAD

So, to check:

if test "$(git rev-parse --abbrev-ref HEAD)" != my-branch; then
  echo Current branch is not my-branch >&2
  exit 1
fi

Get current branch and store as variable using bash

alias IMLAZY='git branch |grep \* | cut -d " " -f2'

:)

How do I get the current branch name in Git?

git branch

should show all the local branches of your repo. The starred branch is your current branch.

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To retrieve only the name of the branch you are on:

git rev-parse --abbrev-ref HEAD

or with Git 2.22 and above:

git branch --show-current

How to programmatically determine the current checked out Git branch

The correct solution is to take a peek at contrib/completions/git-completion.bash does that for bash prompt in __git_ps1. Removing all extras like selecting how to describe detached HEAD situation, i.e. when we are on unnamed branch, it is:

branch_name="$(git symbolic-ref HEAD 2>/dev/null)" ||
branch_name="(unnamed branch)"     # detached HEAD

branch_name=${branch_name##refs/heads/}

git symbolic-ref is used to extract fully qualified branch name from symbolic reference; we use it for HEAD, which is currently checked out branch.

Alternate solution could be:

branch_name=$(git symbolic-ref -q HEAD)
branch_name=${branch_name##refs/heads/}
branch_name=${branch_name:-HEAD}

where in last line we deal with the detached HEAD situation, using simply "HEAD" to denote such situation.

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Added 11-06-2013

Junio C. Hamano (git maintainer) blog post, Checking the current branch programatically, from June 10, 2013 explains whys (and hows) in more detail.

bash script to check if the current git branch = x

Use git rev-parse --abbrev-ref HEAD to get the name of the current branch.

Then it's only a matter of simply comparing values in your script:

BRANCH="$(git rev-parse --abbrev-ref HEAD)"
if [[ "$BRANCH" != "x" ]]; then
  echo 'Aborting script';
  exit 1;
fi

echo 'Do stuff';

How to get the current branch within Github Actions?

I added a separate step for extracting branch name from $GITHUB_REF and set it to the step output

- name: Extract branch name
  shell: bash
  run: echo "##[set-output name=branch;]$(echo ${GITHUB_REF#refs/heads/})"
  id: extract_branch

after that, I can use it in the next steps with

- name: Push to ECR
  id: ecr
  uses: jwalton/gh-ecr-push@master
  with:
    access-key-id: ${{ secrets.AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID }}
    secret-access-key: ${{ secrets.AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY }}
    region: us-west-2
    image: eng:${{ steps.extract_branch.outputs.branch }}

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