How to tell if a file is git tracked (by shell exit code)?

Question

Is there a way to tell if a file is being tracked by running some git command and checking its exit code?

In other words: is git tracking a file?

Answer 1

I don't know of any git command that gives a "bad" exit code, but it seems like an easy way to do it would be to use a git command that gives no output for a file that isn't tracked, such as git-log or git-ls-files. That way you don't really have to do any parsing, you can run it through another simple utility like grep to see if there was any output.

For example,

git-ls-files test_file.c | grep .

will exit with a zero code if the file is tracked, but a exit code of one if the file is not tracked.