A bash script to checkout a recently used branch again (useful when switching between branches often)

b.sh

#!/bin/bash

# Check if fzf is installed
if ! [ -x "$(command -v fzf)" ]; then
  # Check if brew is available
  if [ -x "$(command -v brew)" ]; then
    # Install fzf using brew if it is not installed
    brew install fzf
  else
    # Print a message explaining how to install fzf manually
    echo "❌ fzf is not installed. To install it, please follow the instructions at https://github.com/junegunn/fzf#using-git"
    exit 1
  fi
fi

# Use `git reflog` to get a list of all branch names that were checked out
# Use `grep` to filter out only the lines that contain the string "checkout: moving from"
# This will include all lines in the reflog that indicate a branch was checked out
# Use `sed` to extract the branch name from each line
# Get only unique branch names (without reordering)
branches=$(git reflog | grep "checkout: moving from" | sed -E "s/.*moving from ([^ ]*) to.*/\1/" | awk '!seen[$0]++')

# Use fzf to let the user select a branch from the list
selected_branch=$( \
  echo "$branches" | \
  fzf --prompt="Select a branch to checkout: " \
      --height 10 \
      --border \
      --preview="git log --pretty=format:\"%C(yellow)%h%Creset %ad | %Cgreen%s%Creset %Cred%d%Creset %Cblue[%an]\" --date=short {}" \
      )

# Check if a branch was selected
if [ -z "$selected_branch" ]; then
  # Print an error message if no branch was selected
  echo "❌ No branch was selected. Exiting script."
  exit 1
fi

# Checkout the selected branch
git checkout $selected_branch

# Print a success message
echo "✅ Successfully checked out branch: $selected_branch"