Script to Delete Merged Git Branches

After some weeks, a repository has many old branches that are already merged. This small script finds them and deletes them with the safe option -d, so unmerged work is never deleted.

#!/bin/sh
# Delete local branches already merged into main (keeps main)

git branch --merged main | grep -v -E '^\*|^ +main$' | while read -r branch; do
  git branch -d "$branch"
done

Branches before the cleanup: feature-cart and old-fix are merged, but feature-search has a commit that is not in main.

How it works

• git branch --merged main lists branches whose commits are all in main.
• grep -v removes the current branch (the star line) and main from the list.
• The loop runs git branch -d for each name. The capital -D is not used, so unmerged branches are safe.

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