Generally when referencing a commit, you'll use the SHA or a portion of the
SHA. For example with git-show
:
$ git show cd6a63d014
...
There are many ways to reference commits though. One way is via regex pattern matching on the commit message. For instance, if you recently had a commit with a typo and you had included typo in the commit message, then you could reference that commit like so:
$ git show :/typo
Author: Josh Branchaud
Date: Mon Dec 21 15:50:20 2015 -0600
Fix a typo in the documentation
...
By using :/
followed by some text, git will attempt to find the most
recent commit whose commit message matches the text. As I alluded to, regex
can be used in the text.
See $ man gitrevisions
for more details and other ways to reference
commits.