Extracting a file

Hi,

sometimes there is a need to extract a file from a commit. E.g. some changes have been applied to it in the work directory, and the app being implemented no longer works properly. It would be fine to have a look at that file, some commits ago, when all worked fine. Of course, it is possible to recover the entire old commit, or to make a new branch, or checkout the file (which requires to save the new one before), but the most simple and safe way is to extract the file, giving it a new name. That is possible, using this (hard to remember) trick:

git show HASH:file/path/name.ext > some_new_name.ext

Would not be better to have a "copy" command to copy a file from a commit to a new one in the current directory? This would make a git repository resemble a (readonly) filesystem, which actually it is. Note also that the ability to get from a repository what one has stored in it is the most basic feature anyone wants from a repository.

Thank you -Angelo Borsotti