Re: Restoring files from old commits

["Nikodemus Siivola" <nikodemus@random-state.net>]

Tangentially related to my previous question:

Every once and a while I want to examine an older version
of a file in an editor.

(The typical case is first looking for the source of a change
with git-blame, and then wanting to look at the original code
and the diff side by side.)

My current (suboptimal, I hope!) way of doing getting the file
is git-cat-file: first look at the commit, then look at the tree,
... till I find the SHA1 for the file I want.

git-checkout <sha1-of-commit> <path>, but that leaves the old
version in both the index and the tree, which feels icky especially
if I'm giving this treatment to multiple files at the same time.

So what I'd like is something like

 git cat-path <commit> <path-in-the-tree-referenced-by-that-commit>

Does this exist, or is this scripting time?

Cheers,

 -- Nikodemus