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Is there a better way to find out if a local git branch exists?

I am using the following command to find out if a local git branch with branch-name exists in my repository. Is this correct? Is there a better way?

Please note that I am doing this inside a script. For this reason I'd like to use plumbing commands if possible. 

git show-ref --verify --quiet refs/heads/<branch-name>
# $? == 0 means local branch with <branch-name> exists.
Solution

  • As far as I know, that's the best way to do it in a script. I'm not sure there's much more to add to that, but there might as well be one answer that just says "That command does everything you want" :)

    The only thing you might want to be careful of is that branch names can have surprising characters in them, so you may want to quote <branch-name>.