git last-modified

Faster than 'log -- path' in a loop.

🎯 What & why

git last-modified reports, for each given path, the most recent commit that touched it. Much faster than scripting git log -1 -- <path> in a loop across many files.

🧠 Mental model

Think of it as a batched 'who last touched this file' query. Relatively new command, so it may be missing from older Git installs.

🛠️ Synopsis

git last-modified [<path>...]

🎚️ Switches & options

Flag	What it does
`<path>...`	Paths to query; defaults to all tracked files if omitted
`output`	One line per path: <commit-sha> <path>
`fast path`	Walks history once instead of once per file
`availability`	Newer Git only; check 'git last-modified -h' first
`(no -- needed)`	Paths are taken positionally

💡 Use cases

Build file-level dashboards showing last-touched commit per source file
Find stale files that have not been modified in a long time
Generate ownership/blame summaries without per-file log invocations
Audit a directory tree's modification recency before a refactor

🧪 Examples

All tracked files

git last-modified

Specific paths

git last-modified src/main.c src/util.c README.md

Whole subtree via shell glob

git last-modified src/**/*.py

Pipe to sort by SHA

git last-modified | sort

🎓 Recommendations

Prefer this over a 'for f in $(git ls-files); do git log -1 -- $f; done' loop, which is orders of magnitude slower
Pair with git ls-files -z and xargs -0 if you need to chunk for huge trees

🪤 Common pitfalls

Not present in older Git; scripts targeting LTS distros need a fallback
Output format is minimal (sha + path); join with git log if you need date/author

🔗 Related modules

📝 Quiz

Hit each option, then Check answers. Score is recorded; Next is always open.