Unstage a deleted file in git

Question

Usually, to discard changes to a file you would do:

git checkout -- 

What if the change I want to discard is deleting the file?

Answer 1

Assuming you're wanting to undo the effects of git rm or rm followed by git add -A or something similar:

# this restores the file status in the index
git reset -- 
# then check out a copy from the index
git checkout -- 

To undo git add , the first line above suffices, assuming you haven't committed yet.