There are a number of ways to refer to a particular commit or tree other than spelling out the entire 40-character sha. In Git, these are referred to as a 'treeish'. Partial Sha If your commit sha is '980e3ccdaac54a0d4de358f3fe5d718027d96aae', git will recognize any of the following identically: 980e3ccdaac54a0d4de358f3fe5d718027d96aae 980e3ccdaac54a0d4 980e3cc As long as the partial sha is unique