Git checkout alias that accepts regular expressions

.gitconfig

[alias]
  co = !"find_and_checkout_branch(){\
    for last; do true; done ; \
    pattern='^/.*/$' ;\
    if [[ $# -eq 1 && $last =~ $pattern ]] ;\
    then \
      branch_pattern=`echo $last | sed -e 's/^\\///' -e 's/\\/$//'` ;\
      branch=`git for-each-ref --sort=-committerdate --format='%(refname:short)' refs/heads/ | grep -E $branch_pattern | head -n1` ;\
      if [[ $branch ]] ; then \
        git checkout $branch ;\
      else \
        echo "No branch found matching $last" ; \
        exit 1 ; \
      fi \
    else \
      git checkout $@ ;\
    fi \
  } ; find_and_checkout_branch"

a.md

The below co alias allows you to pass in a basic regular expression (specified by a leading and ending /) for checking out a recently worked on branch. Falls back to normal checkout behavior if the given branch name isn't a regex.

Example

With regex:

git co /cool-feature/
Switched to branch 'spike/1234/cool-feauture'

With regex, no matching branch:

git co /non-existent/
No branch found matching /non-existent/

Without regex:

git co spike/1234/cool-feauture

It works as expected (at least how I expect it to work) with multiple arguments:

git co -b my-new-branch-here
git co -b my-new-branch-here parent-branch-here

If you provide more than one argument it doesn't use regular expression matching.

Awesome post!
To githubbrowser, thanks for the update, works great!