How to Git Commit all Deleted files with Bash

The aim of this page📝 is to explain how to modify a function to handle multiple files in a variable, based on the particular example of a broken commit_deleted function in a Git repository.

Originally, I had a broken function:

function commit_deleted {
    deleted_files=$(git ls-files --deleted)
    if [[ -n "$deleted_files" ]]; then
        git add "$deleted_files"
        git commit -m "deleted"
    fi
}

Explanation

Here is an in-depth explanation of how to modify the function to handle multiple files:

• The original function commit_deleted retrieves a list of deleted files using git ls-files --deleted.
• If there are any deleted files, the function adds and commits them using git add and git commit.
• However, the original function assumes that there is only one deleted file in the $deleted_files variable.

To modify the function to handle multiple files, we can make the following changes:

• Set the internal field separator (IFS) to a newline character ($'\n') to ensure that each file in $deleted_files is treated as a separate item in the loop.
• Use a for loop to iterate over each file in $deleted_files.
• Add each file individually using git add.
• Finally, commit the changes with the message “deleted” using git commit -m "deleted".

Here is the fixed function:

function commit_deleted {
    deleted_files=$(git ls-files --deleted)
    if [[ -n "$deleted_files" ]]; then
        IFS=$'\n'
        for file in $deleted_files; do
            git add "$file"
        done
        git commit -m "deleted"
    fi
}

LINKS

• git ls-files documentation: https://git-scm.com/docs/git-ls-files
• git add documentation: https://git-scm.com/docs/git-add
• git commit documentation: https://git-scm.com/docs/git-commit