cat-file.md

Command: cat-file

Usage

# Using ts-node
npx ts-node <path/to/git.ts> cat-file [options] <object>

# Using node
node <path/to/git.js> cat-file [options] <object>

Options

• object

  The hash of the object to show.

• -p

  Pretty-print the contents of object based on its type.

• -t

  Instead of the content, show the object type identified by object.

Description

Provide content or type information for repository objects.

Approach

1. First check if the given hash corresponds to a valid object or not. This is done via the helper function parseObject() present in utils.ts.

   Note: Objects stored in the packfile are not supported. Refer to the JSDOC of the parseObject function for more details.

2. The parseObject function will given us the type, byteLength and the data in form of the Buffer.

3. The blob and commit type files can be printed as is. The tree type file requires some level of decoding.