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How to reference the initial commit?

I've got a script that needs to reference the initial commit in a repository. git has the special reference HEAD, but doesn't have the corresponding TAIL. I cannot find anything in git help rev-parse that would seem to help me.

Here's what I'd like to do:

git show TAIL

Here's one option I have:

git show `git log --reverse | if read a commit ; then echo $commit ; fi`

That's pretty hacky and depends on the output of git log not changing.

Right now I just tag the initial commit and use that as my refspec. However, I'd like to release a general tool, so that's not a great option.

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Does this have anything to do with the question it was posted as an answer to? If so, please edit to explain, because as is it looks unrelated.

Dan Getz
– Dan Getz

2026-01-24 23:34:16 +00:00
Commented Jan 24 at 23:34

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How to reference the initial commit?

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