The question is about Magit major mode for Emacs function and less so about how to do this via command line interface.
I only have a local Git repository. How would I restore a selected file to its previous version? I believe that the Git command for this must be something like git checkout HEAD^ path/to/file but I may be wrong here too, just guessing really.
What I'm looking for is essentially the same thing as C-x v u in vc-dir buffer.
Essentially, what I was hoping to do was:
delete the modified file.
pull from local repo.
But Magit doesn't seem to be able to do that, it seems to prefer to just delete the file, instead of restoring it.
To discard a modification in magit you just have to go on the hunk or file you want to revert, and use M-x magit-discard which is bound to k with the default keybindings. See the relevant documentation at https://magit.vc/manual/magit/Applying.html for more detail.