GIT-DIFF(1) Git Manual 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 [--merge-base] [<commit>] [--] [<path>...]
git diff [<options>] [--merge-base] <commit> [<commit>...] <commit> [--] [<path>...]
git diff [<options>] <commit>...<commit> [--] [<path>...]
git diff [<options>] <blob> <blob>
git diff [<options>] --no-index [--] <path> <path> [<pathspec>...]
DESCRIPTION
Show changes between the working tree and the index or a tree, changes
between the index and a tree, changes between two trees, changes
resulting from a merge, changes between two blob objects, 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’t. You can stage these changes by using git-add(1).
git diff [<options>] --no-index [--] <path> <path> [<pathspec>...]
This form is to compare the given two paths on the filesystem. You
can omit the --no-index option when running the command in a
working tree controlled by Git and at least one of the paths points
outside the working tree, or when running the command outside a
working tree controlled by Git. This form implies --exit-code. If
both paths point to directories, additional pathspecs may be
provided. These will limit the files included in the difference.
All such pathspecs must be relative as they apply to both sides of
the diff.
git diff [<options>] --cached [--merge-base] [<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. unborn branches) and <commit>
is not given, it shows all staged changes. --staged is a synonym
of --cached.
If --merge-base is given, instead of using <commit>, use the merge
base of <commit> and HEAD. git diff --cached --merge-base A is
equivalent to git diff --cached $(git merge-base A HEAD).
git diff [<options>] [--merge-base] <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.
If --merge-base is given, instead of using <commit>, use the merge
base of <commit> and HEAD. git diff --merge-base A is equivalent
to git diff $(git merge-base A HEAD).
git diff [<options>] [--merge-base] <commit> <commit> [--] [<path>...]
This is to view the changes between two arbitrary <commit>.
If --merge-base is given, use the merge base of the two commits for
the "before" side. git diff --merge-base A B is equivalent to git
diff $(git merge-base A B) B.
git diff [<options>] <commit> <commit>...<commit> [--] [<path>...]
This form is to view the results of a merge commit. The first
listed <commit> must be the merge itself; the remaining two or more
commits should be its parents. Convenient ways to produce the
desired set of revisions are to use the suffixes @ and ^!. If A is
a merge commit, then git diff A A^@, git diff A^! and git show A
all give the same combined diff.
git diff [<options>] <commit>..<commit> [--] [<path>...]
This is synonymous to the earlier form (without the ..) for viewing
the changes between two arbitrary <commit>. 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 you are doing something exotic, it should be noted that
all of the <commit> in the above description, except in the
--merge-base case and in the last two forms that use .. notations, can
be any <tree>. A tree of interest is the one pointed to by the ref
named AUTO_MERGE, which is written by the ort merge strategy upon
hitting merge conflicts (see git-merge(1)). Comparing the working tree
with AUTO_MERGE shows changes you’ve made so far to resolve textual
conflicts (see the examples below).
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).
git diff [<options>] <blob> <blob>
This form is to view the differences between the raw contents of
two blob objects.
OPTIONS
-p, -u, --patch
Generate patch (see the section called “GENERATING PATCH TEXT WITH
-P”). This is the default.
-s, --no-patch
Suppress all output from the diff machinery. Useful for commands
like git show that show the patch by default to squelch their
output, or to cancel the effect of options like --patch, --stat
earlier on the command line in an alias.
-U<n>, --unified=<n>
Generate diffs with <n> lines of context instead of the usual
three. Implies --patch.
--output=<file>
Output to a specific file instead of stdout.
--output-indicator-new=<char>, --output-indicator-old=<char>,
--output-indicator-context=<char>
Specify the character used to indicate new, old or context lines in
the generated patch. Normally they are +, - and ' ' respectively.
--raw
Generate the diff in raw format.
--patch-with-raw
Synonym for -p --raw.
--indent-heuristic
Enable the heuristic that shifts diff hunk boundaries to make
patches easier to read. This is the default.
--no-indent-heuristic
Disable the indent heuristic.
--minimal
Spend extra time to make sure the smallest possible diff is
produced.
--patience
Generate a diff using the "patience diff" algorithm.
--histogram
Generate a diff using the "histogram diff" algorithm.
--anchored=<text>
Generate a diff using the "anchored diff" algorithm.
This option may be specified more than once.
If a line exists in both the source and destination, exists only
once, and starts with <text>, this algorithm attempts to prevent it
from appearing as a deletion or addition in the output. It uses the
"patience diff" algorithm internally.
--diff-algorithm=(patience|minimal|histogram|myers)
Choose a diff algorithm. The variants are as follows:
default, myers
The basic greedy diff algorithm. Currently, this is the
default.
minimal
Spend extra time to make sure the smallest possible diff is
produced.
patience
Use "patience diff" algorithm when generating patches.
histogram
This algorithm extends the patience algorithm to "support
low-occurrence common elements".
For instance, if you configured the diff.algorithm variable to a
non-default value and want to use the default one, then you have to
use --diff-algorithm=default option.
--stat[=<width>[,<name-width>[,<count>]]]
Generate a diffstat. By default, as much space as necessary will be
used for the filename part, and the rest for the graph part.
Maximum width defaults to terminal width, or 80 columns if not
connected to a terminal, and can be overridden by <width>. The
width of the filename part can be limited by giving another width
<name-width> after a comma or by setting
diff.statNameWidth=<name-width>. The width of the graph part can be
limited by using --stat-graph-width=<graph-width> or by setting
diff.statGraphWidth=<graph-width>. Using --stat or
--stat-graph-width affects all commands generating a stat graph,
while setting diff.statNameWidth or diff.statGraphWidth does not
affect git format-patch. By giving a third parameter <count>, you
can limit the output to the first <count> lines, followed by ... if
there are more.
These parameters can also be set individually with
--stat-width=<width>, --stat-name-width=<name-width> and
--stat-count=<count>.
--compact-summary
Output a condensed summary of extended header information such as
file creations or deletions ("new" or "gone", optionally +l if it’s
a symlink) and mode changes (+x or -x for adding or removing
executable bit respectively) in diffstat. The information is put
between the filename part and the graph part. Implies --stat.
--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.
-X [<param>,...], --dirstat[=<param>,...]
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.
--cumulative
Synonym for --dirstat=cumulative.
--dirstat-by-file[=<param>,...]
Synonym for --dirstat=files,<param>,....
--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, pathnames with "unusual" characters are quoted
as explained for the configuration variable core.quotePath (see
git-config(1)).
--name-only
Show only the name of each changed file in the post-image tree. The
file names are often encoded in UTF-8. For more information see the
discussion about encoding in the git-log(1) manual page.
--name-status
Show only the name(s) and status of each changed file. See the
description of the --diff-filter option on what the status letters
mean. Just like --name-only the file names are often encoded in
UTF-8.
--submodule[=<format>]
Specify how differences in submodules are shown. When specifying
--submodule=short the short format is used. This format just shows
the names of the commits at the beginning and end of the range.
When --submodule or --submodule=log is specified, the log format is
used. This format lists the commits in the range like git-
submodule(1) summary does. When --submodule=diff is specified, the
diff format is used. This format shows an inline diff of the
changes in the submodule contents between the commit range.
Defaults to diff.submodule or the short format if the config option
is unset.
--color[=<when>]
Show colored diff. --color (i.e. without =<when>) is the same as
--color=always. <when> can be one of always, never, or auto. 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.
--color-moved[=<mode>]
Moved lines of code are colored differently. It can be changed by
the diff.colorMoved configuration setting. The <mode> defaults to
no if the option is not given and to zebra if the option with no
mode is given. The mode must be one of:
no
Moved lines are not highlighted.
default
Is a synonym for zebra. This may change to a more sensible mode
in the future.
plain
Any line that is added in one location and was removed in
another location will be colored with color.diff.newMoved.
Similarly color.diff.oldMoved will be used for removed lines
that are added somewhere else in the diff. This mode picks up
any moved line, but it is not very useful in a review to
determine if a block of code was moved without permutation.
blocks
Blocks of moved text of at least 20 alphanumeric characters are
detected greedily. The detected blocks are painted using either
the color.diff.(old|new)Moved color. Adjacent blocks cannot be
told apart.
zebra
Blocks of moved text are detected as in blocks mode. The blocks
are painted using either the color.diff.(old|new)Moved color or
color.diff.(old|new)MovedAlternative. The change between the
two colors indicates that a new block was detected.
dimmed-zebra
Similar to zebra, but additional dimming of uninteresting parts
of moved code is performed. The bordering lines of two adjacent
blocks are considered interesting, the rest is uninteresting.
dimmed_zebra is a deprecated synonym.
--no-color-moved
Turn off move detection. This can be used to override configuration
settings. It is the same as --color-moved=no.
--color-moved-ws=<mode>,...
This configures how whitespace is ignored when performing the move
detection for --color-moved. It can be set by the diff.colorMovedWS
configuration setting. These modes can be given as a comma
separated list:
no
Do not ignore whitespace when performing move detection.
ignore-space-at-eol
Ignore changes in whitespace at EOL.
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.
ignore-all-space
Ignore whitespace when comparing lines. This ignores
differences even if one line has whitespace where the other
line has none.
allow-indentation-change
Initially ignore any whitespace in the move detection, then
group the moved code blocks only into a block if the change in
whitespace is the same per line. This is incompatible with the
other modes.
--no-color-moved-ws
Do not ignore whitespace when performing move detection. This can
be used to override configuration settings. It is the same as
--color-moved-ws=no.
--word-diff[=<mode>]
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.
For example, --word-diff-regex=. will treat each character as a
word and, correspondingly, show differences character by character.
The regex can also be set via a diff driver or configuration
option, see gitattributes(5) 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.
--[no-]rename-empty
Whether to use empty blobs as rename source.
--check
Warn if changes introduce conflict markers or whitespace errors.
What are considered whitespace errors is controlled by
core.whitespace configuration. By default, trailing whitespaces
(including lines that consist solely 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.
--ws-error-highlight=<kind>
Highlight whitespace errors in the context, old or new lines of the
diff. Multiple values are separated by comma, none resets previous
values, default reset the list to new and all is a shorthand for
old,new,context. When this option is not given, and the
configuration variable diff.wsErrorHighlight is not set, only
whitespace errors in new lines are highlighted. The whitespace
errors are colored with color.diff.whitespace.
--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. Implies --patch.
--abbrev[=<n>]
Instead of showing the full 40-byte hexadecimal object name in
diff-raw format output and diff-tree header lines, show the
shortest prefix that is at least <n> hexdigits long that uniquely
refers the object. In diff-patch output format, --full-index takes
higher precedence, i.e. if --full-index is specified, full blob
names will be shown regardless of --abbrev. 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’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’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’t
changed. Without a % sign, the number is to be read as a fraction,
with a decimal point before it. I.e., -M5 becomes 0.5, and is thus
the same as -M50%. Similarly, -M05 is the same as -M5%. To limit
detection to exact renames, use -M100%. The default similarity
index is 50%.
-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 or git apply; this is solely for
people who want to just concentrate on reviewing the text after the
change. In addition, the output obviously lacks 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 involve some preliminary steps that can
detect subsets of renames/copies cheaply, followed by an exhaustive
fallback portion that compares all remaining unpaired destinations
to all relevant sources. (For renames, only remaining unpaired
sources are relevant; for copies, all original sources are
relevant.) For N sources and destinations, this exhaustive check is
O(N^2). This option prevents the exhaustive portion of rename/copy
detection from running if the number of source/destination files
involved exceeds the specified number. Defaults to
diff.renameLimit. Note that a value of 0 is treated as unlimited.
--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.
Also, these upper-case letters can be downcased to exclude. E.g.
--diff-filter=ad excludes added and deleted paths.
Note that not all diffs can feature all types. For instance, copied
and renamed entries cannot appear if detection for those types is
disabled.
-S<string>
Look for differences that change the number of occurrences of the
specified <string> (i.e. addition/deletion) in a file. Intended for
the scripter’s use.
It is useful when you’re looking for an exact block of code (like a
struct), and want to know the history of that block since it first
came into being: use the feature iteratively to feed the
interesting block in the preimage back into -S, and keep going
until you get the very first version of the block.
Binary files are searched as well.
-G<regex>
Look for differences whose patch text contains added/removed lines
that match <regex>.
To illustrate the difference between -S<regex> --pickaxe-regex and
-G<regex>, consider a commit with the following diff in the same
file:
+ return frotz(nitfol, two->ptr, 1, 0);
...
- hit = frotz(nitfol, mf2.ptr, 1, 0);
While git log -G"frotz\(nitfol" will show this commit, git log
-S"frotz\(nitfol" --pickaxe-regex will not (because the number of
occurrences of that string did not change).
Unless --text is supplied patches of binary files without a
textconv filter will be ignored.
See the pickaxe entry in gitdiffcore(7) for more information.
--find-object=<object-id>
Look for differences that change the number of occurrences of the
specified object. Similar to -S, just the argument is different in
that it doesn’t search for a specific string but for a specific
object id.
The object can be a blob or a submodule commit. It implies the -t
option in git-log to also find trees.
--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
Treat the <string> given to -S as an extended POSIX regular
expression to match.
-O<orderfile>
Control the order in which files appear in the output. This
overrides the diff.orderFile configuration variable (see git-
config(1)). To cancel diff.orderFile, use -O/dev/null.
The output order is determined by the order of glob patterns in
<orderfile>. All files with pathnames that match the first pattern
are output first, all files with pathnames that match the second
pattern (but not the first) are output next, and so on. All files
with pathnames that do not match any pattern are output last, as if
there was an implicit match-all pattern at the end of the file. If
multiple pathnames have the same rank (they match the same pattern
but no earlier patterns), their output order relative to each other
is the normal order.
<orderfile> is parsed as follows:
• Blank lines are ignored, so they can be used as separators for
readability.
• Lines starting with a hash ("#") are ignored, so they can be
used for comments. Add a backslash ("\") to the beginning of
the pattern if it starts with a hash.
• Each other line contains a single pattern.
Patterns have the same syntax and semantics as patterns used for
fnmatch(3) without the FNM_PATHNAME flag, except a pathname also
matches a pattern if removing any number of the final pathname
components matches the pattern. For example, the pattern "foo*bar"
matches "fooasdfbar" and "foo/bar/baz/asdf" but not "foobarx".
--skip-to=<file>, --rotate-to=<file>
Discard the files before the named <file> from the output (i.e.
skip to), or move them to the end of the output (i.e. rotate to).
These options were invented primarily for the use of the git
difftool command, and may not be very useful otherwise.
-R
Swap two inputs; that is, show differences from index or on-disk
file to tree contents.
--relative[=<path>], --no-relative
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.
--no-relative can be used to countermand both diff.relative config
option and previous --relative.
-a, --text
Treat all files as text.
--ignore-cr-at-eol
Ignore carriage-return at the end of line when doing a comparison.
--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.
--ignore-blank-lines
Ignore changes whose lines are all blank.
-I<regex>, --ignore-matching-lines=<regex>
Ignore changes whose all lines match <regex>. This option may be
specified more than once.
--inter-hunk-context=<number>
Show the context between diff hunks, up to the specified <number>
of lines, thereby fusing hunks that are close to each other.
Defaults to diff.interHunkContext or 0 if the config option is
unset.
-W, --function-context
Show whole function as context lines for each change. The function
names are determined in the same way as git diff works out patch
hunk headers (see "Defining a custom hunk-header" in
gitattributes(5)).
--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. Disables
execution of external diff helpers whose exit code is not trusted,
i.e. their respective configuration option diff.trustExitCode or
diff.<driver>.trustExitCode or environment variable
GIT_EXTERNAL_DIFF_TRUST_EXIT_CODE is false.
--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.
--textconv, --no-textconv
Allow (or disallow) external text conversion filters to be run when
comparing binary files. See gitattributes(5) for details. Because
textconv filters are typically a one-way conversion, the resulting
diff is suitable for human consumption, but cannot be applied. For
this reason, textconv filters are enabled by default only for git-
diff(1) and git-log(1), but not for git-format-patch(1) or diff
plumbing commands.
--ignore-submodules[=(none|untracked|dirty|all)]
Ignore changes to submodules in the diff generation. all 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.
--default-prefix
Use the default source and destination prefixes ("a/" and "b/").
This overrides configuration variables such as diff.noprefix,
diff.srcPrefix, diff.dstPrefix, and diff.mnemonicPrefix (see git-
config(1)).
--line-prefix=<prefix>
Prepend an additional <prefix> to every line of output.
--ita-invisible-in-index
By default entries added by git add -N appear as an existing empty
file in git diff and a new file in git diff --cached. This option
makes the entry appear as a new file in git diff and non-existent
in git diff --cached. This option could be reverted with
--ita-visible-in-index. Both options are experimental and could be
removed in future.
For more detailed explanation on these common options, see also
gitdiffcore(7).
-1, --base, -2, --ours, -3, --theirs
Compare the working tree with
• the "base" version (stage #1) when using -1 or --base,
• "our branch" (stage #2) when using -2 or --ours, or
• "their branch" (stage #3) when using -3 or --theirs.
The index contains these stages only for unmerged entries i.e.
while resolving conflicts. See git-read-tree(1) section "3-Way
Merge" for detailed information.
-0
Omit diff output for unmerged entries and just show "Unmerged". Can
be used only when comparing the working tree with the index.
<path>...
The <path> 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 deletion, unmerged or "work tree out of
sync with the index".
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:
• A: addition of a file
• C: copy of a file into a new one
• D: deletion of a file
• M: modification of the contents or mode of a file
• R: renaming of a file
• T: change in the type of the file (regular file, symbolic link or
submodule)
• U: file is unmerged (you must complete the merge before it can be
committed)
• 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). Status letter M may be followed by a score (denoting the
percentage of dissimilarity) for file rewrites.
The sha1 for "dst" is shown as all 0’s if a file on the filesystem is
out of sync with the index.
Example:
:100644 100644 5be4a4a 0000000 M file.c
Without the -z option, pathnames with "unusual" characters are quoted
as explained for the configuration variable core.quotePath (see git-
config(1)). Using -z the filename is output verbatim and the line is
terminated by a NUL byte.
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. tab-separated pathname(s) of the file
For -c and --cc, only the destination or final path is shown even if
the file was renamed on any side of history. With --combined-all-paths,
the name of the path in each parent is shown followed by the name of
the path in the merge commit.
Examples for -c and --cc without --combined-all-paths:
::100644 100644 100644 fabadb8 cc95eb0 4866510 MM desc.c
::100755 100755 100755 52b7a2d 6d1ac04 d2ac7d7 RM bar.sh
::100644 100644 100644 e07d6c5 9042e82 ee91881 RR phooey.c
Examples when --combined-all-paths added to either -c or --cc:
::100644 100644 100644 fabadb8 cc95eb0 4866510 MM desc.c desc.c desc.c
::100755 100755 100755 52b7a2d 6d1ac04 d2ac7d7 RM foo.sh bar.sh bar.sh
::100644 100644 100644 e07d6c5 9042e82 ee91881 RR fooey.c fuey.c phooey.c
Note that combined diff lists only files which were modified from all
parents.
GENERATING PATCH TEXT WITH -P
Running git-diff(1), git-log(1), git-show(1), git-diff-index(1), git-
diff-tree(1), or git-diff-files(1) with the -p option produces patch
text. You can customize the creation of patch text via the
GIT_EXTERNAL_DIFF and the GIT_DIFF_OPTS environment variables (see
git(1)), and the diff attribute (see gitattributes(5)).
What the -p option produces is slightly different from the traditional
diff format:
1. It is preceded by 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 a 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
the 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 <mode> 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 blob object names 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. Pathnames with "unusual" characters are quoted as explained for the
configuration variable core.quotePath (see git-config(1)).
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
5. Hunk headers mention the name of the function to which the hunk
applies. See "Defining a custom hunk-header" in gitattributes(5)
for details of how to tailor this to specific languages.
COMBINED DIFF FORMAT
Any diff-generating command can take the -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 suitable --diff-merges option to any of these commands to force
generation of diffs in a specific format.
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 by a "git diff" header, that looks like this (when
the -c option is used):
diff --combined file
or like this (when the --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 content movement (renames and copying
detection) are designed to work with the diff of two <tree-ish> and
are not used by combined diff format.
3. It is followed by a two-line from-file/to-file header:
--- a/file
+++ b/file
Similar to the two-line header for the traditional unified diff
format, /dev/null is used to signal created or deleted files.
However, if the --combined-all-paths option is provided, instead of
a two-line from-file/to-file, you get an N+1 line from-file/to-file
header, where N is the number of parents in the merge commit:
--- a/file
--- a/file
--- a/file
+++ b/file
This extended format can be useful if rename or copy detection is
active, to allow you to see the original name of the file in
different parents.
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 to be applied.
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 — appears in A but removed in
B), + (plus — missing in A but added to B), or " " (space — 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’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 or 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)
$ git diff AUTO_MERGE (4)
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
4. Changes in the working
tree you’ve made to
resolve textual conflicts
so far.
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 or 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.
CONFIGURATION
Everything below this line in this section is selectively included from
the git-config(1) documentation. The content is the same as what’s
found there:
diff.autoRefreshIndex
When using git diff to compare with work tree files, do not
consider stat-only changes as changed. Instead, silently run git
update-index --refresh to update the cached stat information for
paths whose contents in the work tree match the contents in the
index. This option defaults to true. Note that this affects only
git diff Porcelain, and not lower level diff commands such as git
diff-files.
diff.dirstat
A comma separated list of --dirstat parameters specifying the
default behavior of the --dirstat option to git diff and friends.
The defaults can be overridden on the command line (using
--dirstat=<param>,...). The fallback defaults (when not changed by
diff.dirstat) are changes,noncumulative,3. 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: files,10,cumulative.
diff.statNameWidth
Limit the width of the filename part in --stat output. If set,
applies to all commands generating --stat output except
format-patch.
diff.statGraphWidth
Limit the width of the graph part in --stat output. If set, applies
to all commands generating --stat output except format-patch.
diff.context
Generate diffs with <n> lines of context instead of the default of
3. This value is overridden by the -U option.
diff.interHunkContext
Show the context between diff hunks, up to the specified number of
lines, thereby fusing the hunks that are close to each other. This
value serves as the default for the --inter-hunk-context command
line option.
diff.external
If this config variable is set, diff generation is not performed
using the internal diff machinery, but using the given command. Can
be overridden with the GIT_EXTERNAL_DIFF environment variable. The
command is called with parameters as described under "git Diffs" in
git(1). Note: if you want to use an external diff program only on a
subset of your files, you might want to use gitattributes(5)
instead.
diff.trustExitCode
If this boolean value is set to true then the diff.external command
is expected to return exit code 0 if it considers the input files
to be equal or 1 if it considers them to be different, like
diff(1). If it is set to false, which is the default, then the
command is expected to return exit code 0 regardless of equality.
Any other exit code causes Git to report a fatal error.
diff.ignoreSubmodules
Sets the default value of --ignore-submodules. Note that this
affects only git diff Porcelain, and not lower level diff commands
such as git diff-files. git checkout and git switch also honor
this setting when reporting uncommitted changes. Setting it to all
disables the submodule summary normally shown by git commit and git
status when status.submoduleSummary is set unless it is overridden
by using the --ignore-submodules command-line option. The git
submodule commands are not affected by this setting. By default
this is set to untracked so that any untracked submodules are
ignored.
diff.mnemonicPrefix
If set, git diff uses a prefix pair that is different from the
standard a/ and b/ depending on what is being compared. When this
configuration is in effect, reverse diff output also swaps the
order of the prefixes:
git diff
compares the (i)ndex and the (w)ork tree;
git diff HEAD
compares a (c)ommit and the (w)ork tree;
git diff --cached
compares a (c)ommit and the (i)ndex;
git diff HEAD:<file1> <file2>
compares an (o)bject and a (w)ork tree entity;
git diff --no-index <a> <b>
compares two non-git things <a> and <b>.
diff.noPrefix
If set, git diff does not show any source or destination prefix.
diff.srcPrefix
If set, git diff uses this source prefix. Defaults to a/.
diff.dstPrefix
If set, git diff uses this destination prefix. Defaults to b/.
diff.relative
If set to true, git diff does not show changes outside of the
directory and show pathnames relative to the current directory.
diff.orderFile
File indicating how to order files within a diff. See the -O option
for details. If diff.orderFile is a relative pathname, it is
treated as relative to the top of the working tree.
diff.renameLimit
The number of files to consider in the exhaustive portion of
copy/rename detection; equivalent to the git diff option -l. If not
set, the default value is currently 1000. This setting has no
effect if rename detection is turned off.
diff.renames
Whether and how Git detects renames. If set to false, rename
detection is disabled. If set to true, basic rename detection is
enabled. If set to copies or copy, Git will detect copies, as well.
Defaults to true. Note that this affects only git diff Porcelain
like git-diff(1) and git-log(1), and not lower level commands such
as git-diff-files(1).
diff.suppressBlankEmpty
A boolean to inhibit the standard behavior of printing a space
before each empty output line. Defaults to false.
diff.submodule
Specify the format in which differences in submodules are shown.
The short format just shows the names of the commits at the
beginning and end of the range. The log format lists the commits in
the range like git-submodule(1) summary does. The diff format shows
an inline diff of the changed contents of the submodule. Defaults
to short.
diff.wordRegex
A POSIX Extended Regular Expression used to determine what is a
"word" when performing word-by-word difference calculations.
Character sequences that match the regular expression are "words",
all other characters are ignorable whitespace.
diff.<driver>.command
The custom diff driver command. See gitattributes(5) for details.
diff.<driver>.trustExitCode
If this boolean value is set to true then the diff.<driver>.command
command is expected to return exit code 0 if it considers the input
files to be equal or 1 if it considers them to be different, like
diff(1). If it is set to false, which is the default, then the
command is expected to return exit code 0 regardless of equality.
Any other exit code causes Git to report a fatal error.
diff.<driver>.xfuncname
The regular expression that the diff driver should use to recognize
the hunk header. A built-in pattern may also be used. See
gitattributes(5) for details.
diff.<driver>.binary
Set this option to true to make the diff driver treat files as
binary. See gitattributes(5) for details.
diff.<driver>.textconv
The command that the diff driver should call to generate the
text-converted version of a file. The result of the conversion is
used to generate a human-readable diff. See gitattributes(5) for
details.
diff.<driver>.wordRegex
The regular expression that the diff driver should use to split
words in a line. See gitattributes(5) for details.
diff.<driver>.cachetextconv
Set this option to true to make the diff driver cache the text
conversion outputs. See gitattributes(5) for details.
diff.indentHeuristic
Set this option to false to disable the default heuristics that
shift diff hunk boundaries to make patches easier to read.
diff.algorithm
Choose a diff algorithm. The variants are as follows:
default, myers
The basic greedy diff algorithm. Currently, this is the
default.
minimal
Spend extra time to make sure the smallest possible diff is
produced.
patience
Use "patience diff" algorithm when generating patches.
histogram
This algorithm extends the patience algorithm to "support
low-occurrence common elements".
diff.wsErrorHighlight
Highlight whitespace errors in the context, old or new lines of the
diff. Multiple values are separated by comma, none resets previous
values, default reset the list to new and all is a shorthand for
old,new,context. The whitespace errors are colored with
color.diff.whitespace. The command line option
--ws-error-highlight=<kind> overrides this setting.
diff.colorMoved
If set to either a valid <mode> or a true value, moved lines in a
diff are colored differently. For details of valid modes see
--color-moved. If simply set to true the default color mode will be
used. When set to false, moved lines are not colored.
diff.colorMovedWS
When moved lines are colored using e.g. the diff.colorMoved
setting, this option controls the mode how spaces are treated. For
details of valid modes see --color-moved-ws in git-diff(1).
SEE ALSO
diff(1), git-difftool(1), git-log(1), gitdiffcore(7), git-format-
patch(1), git-apply(1), git-show(1)
GIT
Part of the git(1) suite
Git 2.51.0 2025-08-17 GIT-DIFF(1)
git diff \- Show changes between commits, commit and working tree, etc