GIT-DIFF(1)                                                        GIT-DIFF(1)



NAME
       git-diff - Show changes between commits, commit and working tree, etc

SYNOPSIS
       git diff [options] [<commit>] [--] [<path>...]
       git diff [options] --cached [<commit>] [--] [<path>...]
       git diff [options] <commit> <commit> [--] [<path>...]
       git diff [options] [--no-index] [--] <path> <path>





DESCRIPTION
       Show changes between the working tree and the index or a tree, changes
       between the index and a tree, changes between two trees, or changes
       between two files on disk.


       git diff [--options] [--] [<path>...]
              This form is to view the changes you made relative to the index
              (staging area for the next commit). In other words, the
              differences are what you could tell git to further add to the
              index but you still haven&#8217;t. You can stage these changes
              by using git-add(1).

              If exactly two paths are given and at least one points outside
              the current repository, git diff will compare the two files /
              directories. This behavior can be forced by --no-index.


       git diff [--options] --cached [<commit>] [--] [<path>...]
              This form is to view the changes you staged for the next commit
              relative to the named <commit>. Typically you would want
              comparison with the latest commit, so if you do not give
              <commit>, it defaults to HEAD. If HEAD does not exist (e.g.
              unborned branches) and <commit> is not given, it shows all
              staged changes. --staged is a synonym of --cached.


       git diff [--options] <commit> [--] [<path>...]
              This form is to view the changes you have in your working tree
              relative to the named <commit>. You can use HEAD to compare it
              with the latest commit, or a branch name to compare with the tip
              of a different branch.


       git diff [--options] <commit> <commit> [--] [<path>...]
              This is to view the changes between two arbitrary <commit>.


       git diff [--options] <commit>..<commit> [--] [<path>...]
              This is synonymous to the previous form. If <commit> on one side
              is omitted, it will have the same effect as using HEAD instead.


       git diff [--options] <commit>...<commit> [--] [<path>...]
              This form is to view the changes on the branch containing and up
              to the second <commit>, starting at a common ancestor of both
              <commit>. "git diff A...B" is equivalent to "git diff
              $(git-merge-base A B) B". You can omit any one of <commit>,
              which has the same effect as using HEAD instead.


              Just in case if you are doing something exotic, it should be
              noted that all of the <commit> in the above description, except
              in the last two forms that use ".." notations, can be any
              <tree>. The third form (git diff <commit> <commit>) can also be
              used to compare two <blob> objects.


              For a more complete list of ways to spell <commit>, see
              "SPECIFYING REVISIONS" section in gitrevisions(7). However,
              "diff" is about comparing two endpoints, not ranges, and the
              range notations ("<commit>..<commit>" and "<commit>...<commit>")
              do not mean a range as defined in the "SPECIFYING RANGES"
              section in gitrevisions(7).


OPTIONS
       -p, -u, --patch
              Generate patch (see section on generating patches). This is the
              default.


       -U<n>, --unified=<n>
              Generate diffs with <n> lines of context instead of the usual
              three. Implies -p.


       --raw  Generate the raw format.


       --patch-with-raw
              Synonym for -p --raw.


       --patience
              Generate a diff using the "patience diff" algorithm.


       --stat[=<width>[,<name-width>]]
              Generate a diffstat. You can override the default output width
              for 80-column terminal by --stat=<width>. The width of the
              filename part can be controlled by giving another width to it
              separated by a comma.


       --numstat
              Similar to --stat, but shows number of added and deleted lines
              in decimal notation and pathname without abbreviation, to make
              it more machine friendly. For binary files, outputs two -
              instead of saying 0 0.


       --shortstat
              Output only the last line of the --stat format containing total
              number of modified files, as well as number of added and deleted
              lines.


       --dirstat[=<param1,param2,...>]
              Output the distribution of relative amount of changes for each
              sub-directory. The behavior of --dirstat can be customized by
              passing it a comma separated list of parameters. The defaults
              are controlled by the diff.dirstat configuration variable (see
              git-config(1)). The following parameters are available:




              changes
                     Compute the dirstat numbers by counting the lines that
                     have been removed from the source, or added to the
                     destination. This ignores the amount of pure code
                     movements within a file. In other words, rearranging
                     lines in a file is not counted as much as other changes.
                     This is the default behavior when no parameter is given.


              lines  Compute the dirstat numbers by doing the regular
                     line-based diff analysis, and summing the removed/added
                     line counts. (For binary files, count 64-byte chunks
                     instead, since binary files have no natural concept of
                     lines). This is a more expensive --dirstat behavior than
                     the changes behavior, but it does count rearranged lines
                     within a file as much as other changes. The resulting
                     output is consistent with what you get from the other
                     --*stat options.


              files  Compute the dirstat numbers by counting the number of
                     files changed. Each changed file counts equally in the
                     dirstat analysis. This is the computationally cheapest
                     --dirstat behavior, since it does not have to look at the
                     file contents at all.


              cumulative
                     Count changes in a child directory for the parent
                     directory as well. Note that when using cumulative, the
                     sum of the percentages reported may exceed 100%. The
                     default (non-cumulative) behavior can be specified with
                     the noncumulative parameter.


              <limit>
                     An integer parameter specifies a cut-off percent (3% by
                     default). Directories contributing less than this
                     percentage of the changes are not shown in the output.


              Example: The following will count changed files, while ignoring
              directories with less than 10% of the total amount of changed
              files, and accumulating child directory counts in the parent
              directories: --dirstat=files,10,cumulative.


       --summary
              Output a condensed summary of extended header information such
              as creations, renames and mode changes.


       --patch-with-stat
              Synonym for -p --stat.


       -z     When --raw, --numstat, --name-only or --name-status has been
              given, do not munge pathnames and use NULs as output field
              terminators.

              Without this option, each pathname output will have TAB, LF,
              double quotes, and backslash characters replaced with \t, \n,
              \", and \\, respectively, and the pathname will be enclosed in
              double quotes if any of those replacements occurred.


       --name-only
              Show only names of changed files.


       --name-status
              Show only names and status of changed files. See the description
              of the --diff-filter option on what the status letters mean.


       --submodule[=<format>]
              Chose the output format for submodule differences. <format> can
              be one of short and log. short just shows pairs of commit names,
              this format is used when this option is not given. log is the
              default value for this option and lists the commits in that
              commit range like the summary option of git-submodule(1) does.


       --color[=<when>]
              Show colored diff. The value must be always (the default for
              <when>), never, or auto. The default value is never. It can be
              changed by the color.ui and color.diff configuration settings.


       --no-color
              Turn off colored diff. This can be used to override
              configuration settings. It is the same as --color=never.


       --word-diff[=<mode>]
              Show a word diff, using the <mode> to delimit changed words. By
              default, words are delimited by whitespace; see
              --word-diff-regex below. The <mode> defaults to plain, and must
              be one of:




              color  Highlight changed words using only colors. Implies
                     --color.


              plain  Show words as [-removed-] and {added}. Makes no attempts
                     to escape the delimiters if they appear in the input, so
                     the output may be ambiguous.


              porcelain
                     Use a special line-based format intended for script
                     consumption. Added/removed/unchanged runs are printed in
                     the usual unified diff format, starting with a +/-/` `
                     character at the beginning of the line and extending to
                     the end of the line. Newlines in the input are
                     represented by a tilde ~ on a line of its own.


              none   Disable word diff again.


              Note that despite the name of the first mode, color is used to
              highlight the changed parts in all modes if enabled.


       --word-diff-regex=<regex>
              Use <regex> to decide what a word is, instead of considering
              runs of non-whitespace to be a word. Also implies --word-diff
              unless it was already enabled.

              Every non-overlapping match of the <regex> is considered a word.
              Anything between these matches is considered whitespace and
              ignored(!) for the purposes of finding differences. You may want
              to append |[^[:space:]] to your regular expression to make sure
              that it matches all non-whitespace characters. A match that
              contains a newline is silently truncated(!) at the newline.

              The regex can also be set via a diff driver or configuration
              option, see gitattributes(1) or git-config(1). Giving it
              explicitly overrides any diff driver or configuration setting.
              Diff drivers override configuration settings.


       --color-words[=<regex>]
              Equivalent to --word-diff=color plus (if a regex was specified)
              --word-diff-regex=<regex>.


       --no-renames
              Turn off rename detection, even when the configuration file
              gives the default to do so.


       --check
              Warn if changes introduce whitespace errors. What are considered
              whitespace errors is controlled by core.whitespace
              configuration. By default, trailing whitespaces (including lines
              that solely consist of whitespaces) and a space character that
              is immediately followed by a tab character inside the initial
              indent of the line are considered whitespace errors. Exits with
              non-zero status if problems are found. Not compatible with
              --exit-code.


       --full-index
              Instead of the first handful of characters, show the full pre-
              and post-image blob object names on the "index" line when
              generating patch format output.


       --binary
              In addition to --full-index, output a binary diff that can be
              applied with git-apply.


       --abbrev[=<n>]
              Instead of showing the full 40-byte hexadecimal object name in
              diff-raw format output and diff-tree header lines, show only a
              partial prefix. This is independent of the --full-index option
              above, which controls the diff-patch output format. Non default
              number of digits can be specified with --abbrev=<n>.


       -B[<n>][/<m>], --break-rewrites[=[<n>][/<m>]]
              Break complete rewrite changes into pairs of delete and create.
              This serves two purposes:

              It affects the way a change that amounts to a total rewrite of a
              file not as a series of deletion and insertion mixed together
              with a very few lines that happen to match textually as the
              context, but as a single deletion of everything old followed by
              a single insertion of everything new, and the number m controls
              this aspect of the -B option (defaults to 60%). -B/70% specifies
              that less than 30% of the original should remain in the result
              for git to consider it a total rewrite (i.e. otherwise the
              resulting patch will be a series of deletion and insertion mixed
              together with context lines).

              When used with -M, a totally-rewritten file is also considered
              as the source of a rename (usually -M only considers a file that
              disappeared as the source of a rename), and the number n
              controls this aspect of the -B option (defaults to 50%). -B20%
              specifies that a change with addition and deletion compared to
              20% or more of the file&#8217;s size are eligible for being
              picked up as a possible source of a rename to another file.


       -M[<n>], --find-renames[=<n>]
              Detect renames. If n is specified, it is a threshold on the
              similarity index (i.e. amount of addition/deletions compared to
              the file&#8217;s size). For example, -M90% means git should
              consider a delete/add pair to be a rename if more than 90% of
              the file hasn&#8217;t changed.


       -C[<n>], --find-copies[=<n>]
              Detect copies as well as renames. See also --find-copies-harder.
              If n is specified, it has the same meaning as for -M<n>.


       --find-copies-harder
              For performance reasons, by default, -C option finds copies only
              if the original file of the copy was modified in the same
              changeset. This flag makes the command inspect unmodified files
              as candidates for the source of copy. This is a very expensive
              operation for large projects, so use it with caution. Giving
              more than one -C option has the same effect.


       -D, --irreversible-delete
              Omit the preimage for deletes, i.e. print only the header but
              not the diff between the preimage and /dev/null. The resulting
              patch is not meant to be applied with patch nor git apply; this
              is solely for people who want to just concentrate on reviewing
              the text after the change. In addition, the output obviously
              lack enough information to apply such a patch in reverse, even
              manually, hence the name of the option.

              When used together with -B, omit also the preimage in the
              deletion part of a delete/create pair.


       -l<num>
              The -M and -C options require O(n^2) processing time where n is
              the number of potential rename/copy targets. This option
              prevents rename/copy detection from running if the number of
              rename/copy targets exceeds the specified number.


       --diff-filter=[(A|C|D|M|R|T|U|X|B)...[*]]
              Select only files that are Added (A), Copied (C), Deleted (D),
              Modified (M), Renamed (R), have their type (i.e. regular file,
              symlink, submodule, ...) changed (T), are Unmerged (U), are
              Unknown (X), or have had their pairing Broken (B). Any
              combination of the filter characters (including none) can be
              used. When * (All-or-none) is added to the combination, all
              paths are selected if there is any file that matches other
              criteria in the comparison; if there is no file that matches
              other criteria, nothing is selected.


       -S<string>
              Look for differences that introduce or remove an instance of
              <string>. Note that this is different than the string simply
              appearing in diff output; see the pickaxe entry in
              gitdiffcore(7) for more details.


       -G<regex>
              Look for differences whose added or removed line matches the
              given <regex>.


       --pickaxe-all
              When -S or -G finds a change, show all the changes in that
              changeset, not just the files that contain the change in
              <string>.


       --pickaxe-regex
              Make the <string> not a plain string but an extended POSIX regex
              to match.


       -O<orderfile>
              Output the patch in the order specified in the <orderfile>,
              which has one shell glob pattern per line.


       -R     Swap two inputs; that is, show differences from index or on-disk
              file to tree contents.


       --relative[=<path>]
              When run from a subdirectory of the project, it can be told to
              exclude changes outside the directory and show pathnames
              relative to it with this option. When you are not in a
              subdirectory (e.g. in a bare repository), you can name which
              subdirectory to make the output relative to by giving a <path>
              as an argument.


       -a, --text
              Treat all files as text.


       --ignore-space-at-eol
              Ignore changes in whitespace at EOL.


       -b, --ignore-space-change
              Ignore changes in amount of whitespace. This ignores whitespace
              at line end, and considers all other sequences of one or more
              whitespace characters to be equivalent.


       -w, --ignore-all-space
              Ignore whitespace when comparing lines. This ignores differences
              even if one line has whitespace where the other line has none.


       --inter-hunk-context=<lines>
              Show the context between diff hunks, up to the specified number
              of lines, thereby fusing hunks that are close to each other.


       --exit-code
              Make the program exit with codes similar to diff(1). That is, it
              exits with 1 if there were differences and 0 means no
              differences.


       --quiet
              Disable all output of the program. Implies --exit-code.


       --ext-diff
              Allow an external diff helper to be executed. If you set an
              external diff driver with gitattributes(5), you need to use this
              option with git-log(1) and friends.


       --no-ext-diff
              Disallow external diff drivers.


       --ignore-submodules[=<when>]
              Ignore changes to submodules in the diff generation. <when> can
              be either "none", "untracked", "dirty" or "all", which is the
              default Using "none" will consider the submodule modified when
              it either contains untracked or modified files or its HEAD
              differs from the commit recorded in the superproject and can be
              used to override any settings of the ignore option in
              git-config(1) or gitmodules(5). When "untracked" is used
              submodules are not considered dirty when they only contain
              untracked content (but they are still scanned for modified
              content). Using "dirty" ignores all changes to the work tree of
              submodules, only changes to the commits stored in the
              superproject are shown (this was the behavior until 1.7.0).
              Using "all" hides all changes to submodules.


       --src-prefix=<prefix>
              Show the given source prefix instead of "a/".


       --dst-prefix=<prefix>
              Show the given destination prefix instead of "b/".


       --no-prefix
              Do not show any source or destination prefix.


              For more detailed explanation on these common options, see also
              gitdiffcore(7).


       <path>...
              The <paths> parameters, when given, are used to limit the diff
              to the named paths (you can give directory names and get diff
              for all files under them).


RAW OUTPUT FORMAT
       The raw output format from "git-diff-index", "git-diff-tree",
       "git-diff-files" and "git diff --raw" are very similar.


       These commands all compare two sets of things; what is compared
       differs:


       git-diff-index <tree-ish>
              compares the <tree-ish> and the files on the filesystem.


       git-diff-index --cached <tree-ish>
              compares the <tree-ish> and the index.


       git-diff-tree [-r] <tree-ish-1> <tree-ish-2> [<pattern>...]
              compares the trees named by the two arguments.


       git-diff-files [<pattern>...]
              compares the index and the files on the filesystem.


              The "git-diff-tree" command begins its output by printing the
              hash of what is being compared. After that, all the commands
              print one output line per changed file.


              An output line is formatted this way:

              in-place edit  :100644 100644 bcd1234... 0123456... M file0
              copy-edit      :100644 100644 abcd123... 1234567... C68 file1 file2
              rename-edit    :100644 100644 abcd123... 1234567... R86 file1 file3
              create         :000000 100644 0000000... 1234567... A file4
              delete         :100644 000000 1234567... 0000000... D file5
              unmerged       :000000 000000 0000000... 0000000... U file6





              That is, from the left to the right:


       1. a colon.

       2. mode for "src"; 000000 if creation or unmerged.

       3. a space.

       4. mode for "dst"; 000000 if deletion or unmerged.

       5. a space.

       6. sha1 for "src"; 0{40} if creation or unmerged.

       7. a space.

       8. sha1 for "dst"; 0{40} if creation, unmerged or "look at work tree".

       9. a space.

       10.
          status, followed by optional "score" number.

       11.
          a tab or a NUL when -z option is used.

       12.
          path for "src"

       13.
          a tab or a NUL when -z option is used; only exists for C or R.

       14.
          path for "dst"; only exists for C or R.

       15.
          an LF or a NUL when -z option is used, to terminate the record.

       Possible status letters are:


       o  A: addition of a file

       o  C: copy of a file into a new one

       o  D: deletion of a file

       o  M: modification of the contents or mode of a file

       o  R: renaming of a file

       o  T: change in the type of the file

       o  U: file is unmerged (you must complete the merge before it can be
          committed)

       o  X: "unknown" change type (most probably a bug, please report it)

       Status letters C and R are always followed by a score (denoting the
       percentage of similarity between the source and target of the move or
       copy), and are the only ones to be so.


       <sha1> is shown as all 0&#8217;s if a file is new on the filesystem and
       it is out of sync with the index.


       Example:

       :100644 100644 5be4a4...... 000000...... M file.c





       When -z option is not used, TAB, LF, and backslash characters in
       pathnames are represented as \t, \n, and \\, respectively.


DIFF FORMAT FOR MERGES
       "git-diff-tree", "git-diff-files" and "git-diff --raw" can take -c or
       --cc option to generate diff output also for merge commits. The output
       differs from the format described above in the following way:


       1. there is a colon for each parent

       2. there are more "src" modes and "src" sha1

       3. status is concatenated status characters for each parent

       4. no optional "score" number

       5. single path, only for "dst"

       Example:

       ::100644 100644 100644 fabadb8... cc95eb0... 4866510... MM      describe.c





       Note that combined diff lists only files which were modified from all
       parents.


GENERATING PATCHES WITH -P
       When "git-diff-index", "git-diff-tree", or "git-diff-files" are run
       with a -p option, "git diff" without the --raw option, or "git log"
       with the "-p" option, they do not produce the output described above;
       instead they produce a patch file. You can customize the creation of
       such patches via the GIT_EXTERNAL_DIFF and the GIT_DIFF_OPTS
       environment variables.


       What the -p option produces is slightly different from the traditional
       diff format:


       1. It is preceded with a "git diff" header that looks like this:


          diff --git a/file1 b/file2
          The a/ and b/ filenames are the same unless rename/copy is involved.
          Especially, even for a creation or a deletion, /dev/null is not used
          in place of the a/ or b/ filenames.

          When rename/copy is involved, file1 and file2 show the name of the
          source file of the rename/copy and the name of the file that
          rename/copy produces, respectively.

       2. It is followed by one or more extended header lines:


          old mode <mode>
          new mode <mode>
          deleted file mode <mode>
          new file mode <mode>
          copy from <path>
          copy to <path>
          rename from <path>
          rename to <path>
          similarity index <number>
          dissimilarity index <number>
          index <hash>..<hash> <mode>
          File modes are printed as 6-digit octal numbers including the file
          type and file permission bits.

          Path names in extended headers do not include the a/ and b/
          prefixes.

          The similarity index is the percentage of unchanged lines, and the
          dissimilarity index is the percentage of changed lines. It is a
          rounded down integer, followed by a percent sign. The similarity
          index value of 100% is thus reserved for two equal files, while 100%
          dissimilarity means that no line from the old file made it into the
          new one.

          The index line includes the SHA-1 checksum before and after the
          change. The <mode> is included if the file mode does not change;
          otherwise, separate lines indicate the old and the new mode.

       3. TAB, LF, double quote and backslash characters in pathnames are
          represented as \t, \n, \" and \\, respectively. If there is need for
          such substitution then the whole pathname is put in double quotes.

       4. All the file1 files in the output refer to files before the commit,
          and all the file2 files refer to files after the commit. It is
          incorrect to apply each change to each file sequentially. For
          example, this patch will swap a and b:

          diff --git a/a b/b
          rename from a
          rename to b
          diff --git a/b b/a
          rename from b
          rename to a

COMBINED DIFF FORMAT
       Any diff-generating command can take the &#8216;-c` or --cc option to
       produce a combined diff when showing a merge. This is the default
       format when showing merges with git-diff(1) or git-show(1). Note also
       that you can give the `-m&#8217; option to any of these commands to
       force generation of diffs with individual parents of a merge.


       A combined diff format looks like this:

       diff --combined describe.c
       index fabadb8,cc95eb0..4866510
       --- a/describe.c
       +++ b/describe.c
       @@@ -98,20 -98,12 +98,20 @@@
               return (a_date > b_date) ? -1 : (a_date == b_date) ? 0 : 1;
         }

       - static void describe(char *arg)
        -static void describe(struct commit *cmit, int last_one)
       ++static void describe(char *arg, int last_one)
         {
        +      unsigned char sha1[20];
        +      struct commit *cmit;
               struct commit_list *list;
               static int initialized = 0;
               struct commit_name *n;

        +      if (get_sha1(arg, sha1) < 0)
        +              usage(describe_usage);
        +      cmit = lookup_commit_reference(sha1);
        +      if (!cmit)
        +              usage(describe_usage);
        +
               if (!initialized) {
                       initialized = 1;
                       for_each_ref(get_name);





       1. It is preceded with a "git diff" header, that looks like this (when
          -c option is used):


          diff --combined file
          or like this (when --cc option is used):

          diff --cc file

       2. It is followed by one or more extended header lines (this example
          shows a merge with two parents):


          index <hash>,<hash>..<hash>
          mode <mode>,<mode>..<mode>
          new file mode <mode>
          deleted file mode <mode>,<mode>
          The mode <mode>,<mode>..<mode> line appears only if at least one of
          the <mode> is different from the rest. Extended headers with
          information about detected contents movement (renames and copying
          detection) are designed to work with diff of two <tree-ish> and are
          not used by combined diff format.

       3. It is followed by two-line from-file/to-file header


          --- a/file
          +++ b/file
          Similar to two-line header for traditional unified diff format,
          /dev/null is used to signal created or deleted files.

       4. Chunk header format is modified to prevent people from accidentally
          feeding it to patch -p1. Combined diff format was created for review
          of merge commit changes, and was not meant for apply. The change is
          similar to the change in the extended index header:


          @@@ <from-file-range> <from-file-range> <to-file-range> @@@
          There are (number of parents + 1) @ characters in the chunk header
          for combined diff format.

       Unlike the traditional unified diff format, which shows two files A and
       B with a single column that has - (minus&#8201;--&#8201;appears in A
       but removed in B), + (plus&#8201;--&#8201;missing in A but added to B),
       or " " (space&#8201;--&#8201;unchanged) prefix, this format compares
       two or more files file1, file2,... with one file X, and shows how X
       differs from each of fileN. One column for each of fileN is prepended
       to the output line to note how X&#8217;s line is different from it.


       A - character in the column N means that the line appears in fileN but
       it does not appear in the result. A + character in the column N means
       that the line appears in the result, and fileN does not have that line
       (in other words, the line was added, from the point of view of that
       parent).


       In the above example output, the function signature was changed from
       both files (hence two - removals from both file1 and file2, plus ++ to
       mean one line that was added does not appear in either file1 nor
       file2). Also eight other lines are the same from file1 but do not
       appear in file2 (hence prefixed with +).


       When shown by git diff-tree -c, it compares the parents of a merge
       commit with the merge result (i.e. file1..fileN are the parents). When
       shown by git diff-files -c, it compares the two unresolved merge
       parents with the working tree file (i.e. file1 is stage 2 aka "our
       version", file2 is stage 3 aka "their version").


OTHER DIFF FORMATS
       The --summary option describes newly added, deleted, renamed and copied
       files. The --stat option adds diffstat(1) graph to the output. These
       options can be combined with other options, such as -p, and are meant
       for human consumption.


       When showing a change that involves a rename or a copy, --stat output
       formats the pathnames compactly by combining common prefix and suffix
       of the pathnames. For example, a change that moves arch/i386/Makefile
       to arch/x86/Makefile while modifying 4 lines will be shown like this:

       arch/{i386 => x86}/Makefile    |   4 +--





       The --numstat option gives the diffstat(1) information but is designed
       for easier machine consumption. An entry in --numstat output looks like
       this:

       1       2       README
       3       1       arch/{i386 => x86}/Makefile





       That is, from left to right:


       1. the number of added lines;

       2. a tab;

       3. the number of deleted lines;

       4. a tab;

       5. pathname (possibly with rename/copy information);

       6. a newline.

       When -z output option is in effect, the output is formatted this way:

       1       2       README NUL
       3       1       NUL arch/i386/Makefile NUL arch/x86/Makefile NUL





       That is:


       1. the number of added lines;

       2. a tab;

       3. the number of deleted lines;

       4. a tab;

       5. a NUL (only exists if renamed/copied);

       6. pathname in preimage;

       7. a NUL (only exists if renamed/copied);

       8. pathname in postimage (only exists if renamed/copied);

       9. a NUL.

       The extra NUL before the preimage path in renamed case is to allow
       scripts that read the output to tell if the current record being read
       is a single-path record or a rename/copy record without reading ahead.
       After reading added and deleted lines, reading up to NUL would yield
       the pathname, but if that is NUL, the record will show two paths.


EXAMPLES
       Various ways to check your working tree

              $ git diff            (1)
              $ git diff --cached   (2)
              $ git diff HEAD       (3)


              1. Changes in the working tree not yet staged for the next
              commit.
              2. Changes between the index and your last commit; what you
              would be committing if you run "git commit" without "-a" option.
              3. Changes in the working tree since your last commit; what you
              would be committing if you run "git commit -a"



       Comparing with arbitrary commits

              $ git diff test            (1)
              $ git diff HEAD -- ./test  (2)
              $ git diff HEAD^ HEAD      (3)


              1. Instead of using the tip of the current branch, compare with
              the tip of "test" branch.
              2. Instead of comparing with the tip of "test" branch, compare
              with the tip of the current branch, but limit the comparison to
              the file "test".
              3. Compare the version before the last commit and the last
              commit.



       Comparing branches

              $ git diff topic master    (1)
              $ git diff topic..master   (2)
              $ git diff topic...master  (3)


              1. Changes between the tips of the topic and the master
              branches.
              2. Same as above.
              3. Changes that occurred on the master branch since when the
              topic branch was started off it.



       Limiting the diff output

              $ git diff --diff-filter=MRC            (1)
              $ git diff --name-status                (2)
              $ git diff arch/i386 include/asm-i386   (3)


              1. Show only modification, rename and copy, but not addition nor
              deletion.
              2. Show only names and the nature of change, but not actual diff
              output.
              3. Limit diff output to named subtrees.



       Munging the diff output

              $ git diff --find-copies-harder -B -C  (1)
              $ git diff -R                          (2)


              1. Spend extra cycles to find renames, copies and complete
              rewrites (very expensive).
              2. Output diff in reverse.



SEE ALSO
       diff(1), git-difftool(1), git-log(1), gitdiffcore(7),
       git-format-patch(1), git-apply(1)


GIT
       Part of the git(1) suite




                                                                   GIT-DIFF(1)
