1GIT-DIFF-FILES(1) Git Manual GIT-DIFF-FILES(1)
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6 git-diff-files - Compares files in the working tree and the index
7
9 git diff-files [-q] [-0|-1|-2|-3|-c|--cc] [<common diff options>] [<path>...]
10
12 Compares the files in the working tree and the index. When paths are
13 specified, compares only those named paths. Otherwise all entries in
14 the index are compared. The output format is the same as for git
15 diff-index and git diff-tree.
16
18 -p, -u, --patch
19 Generate patch (see section on generating patches).
20 -s, --no-patch
22 Suppress diff output. Useful for commands like git show that show
23 the patch by default, or to cancel the effect of --patch.
24 -U<n>, --unified=<n>
26 Generate diffs with <n> lines of context instead of the usual
27 three. Implies --patch.
28 --output=<file>
30 Output to a specific file instead of stdout.
31 --output-indicator-new=<char>, --output-indicator-old=<char>,
33 --output-indicator-context=<char>
34 Specify the character used to indicate new, old or context lines in
35 the generated patch. Normally they are +, - and ' ' respectively.
36 --raw
38 Generate the diff in raw format. This is the default.
39 --patch-with-raw
41 Synonym for -p --raw.
42 --indent-heuristic
44 Enable the heuristic that shifts diff hunk boundaries to make
45 patches easier to read. This is the default.
46 --no-indent-heuristic
48 Disable the indent heuristic.
49 --minimal
51 Spend extra time to make sure the smallest possible diff is
52 produced.
53 --patience
55 Generate a diff using the "patience diff" algorithm.
56 --histogram
58 Generate a diff using the "histogram diff" algorithm.
59 --anchored=<text>
61 Generate a diff using the "anchored diff" algorithm.
62 This option may be specified more than once.
64 If a line exists in both the source and destination, exists only
66 once, and starts with this text, this algorithm attempts to prevent
67 it from appearing as a deletion or addition in the output. It uses
68 the "patience diff" algorithm internally.
69 --diff-algorithm={patience|minimal|histogram|myers}
71 Choose a diff algorithm. The variants are as follows:
72 default, myers
74 The basic greedy diff algorithm. Currently, this is the
75 default.
76 minimal
78 Spend extra time to make sure the smallest possible diff is
79 produced.
80 patience
82 Use "patience diff" algorithm when generating patches.
83 histogram
85 This algorithm extends the patience algorithm to "support
86 low-occurrence common elements".
87 For instance, if you configured the diff.algorithm variable to a
89 non-default value and want to use the default one, then you have to
90 use --diff-algorithm=default option.
91 --stat[=<width>[,<name-width>[,<count>]]]
93 Generate a diffstat. By default, as much space as necessary will be
94 used for the filename part, and the rest for the graph part.
95 Maximum width defaults to terminal width, or 80 columns if not
96 connected to a terminal, and can be overridden by <width>. The
97 width of the filename part can be limited by giving another width
98 <name-width> after a comma. The width of the graph part can be
99 limited by using --stat-graph-width=<width> (affects all commands
100 generating a stat graph) or by setting diff.statGraphWidth=<width>
101 (does not affect git format-patch). By giving a third parameter
102 <count>, you can limit the output to the first <count> lines,
103 followed by ... if there are more.
104 These parameters can also be set individually with
106 --stat-width=<width>, --stat-name-width=<name-width> and
107 --stat-count=<count>.
108 --compact-summary
110 Output a condensed summary of extended header information such as
111 file creations or deletions ("new" or "gone", optionally "+l" if
112 it’s a symlink) and mode changes ("+x" or "-x" for adding or
113 removing executable bit respectively) in diffstat. The information
114 is put between the filename part and the graph part. Implies
115 --stat.
116 --numstat
118 Similar to --stat, but shows number of added and deleted lines in
119 decimal notation and pathname without abbreviation, to make it more
120 machine friendly. For binary files, outputs two - instead of saying
121 0 0.
122 --shortstat
124 Output only the last line of the --stat format containing total
125 number of modified files, as well as number of added and deleted
126 lines.
127 -X[<param1,param2,...>], --dirstat[=<param1,param2,...>]
129 Output the distribution of relative amount of changes for each
130 sub-directory. The behavior of --dirstat can be customized by
131 passing it a comma separated list of parameters. The defaults are
132 controlled by the diff.dirstat configuration variable (see git-
133 config(1)). The following parameters are available:
134 changes
136 Compute the dirstat numbers by counting the lines that have
137 been removed from the source, or added to the destination. This
138 ignores the amount of pure code movements within a file. In
139 other words, rearranging lines in a file is not counted as much
140 as other changes. This is the default behavior when no
141 parameter is given.
142 lines
144 Compute the dirstat numbers by doing the regular line-based
145 diff analysis, and summing the removed/added line counts. (For
146 binary files, count 64-byte chunks instead, since binary files
147 have no natural concept of lines). This is a more expensive
148 --dirstat behavior than the changes behavior, but it does count
149 rearranged lines within a file as much as other changes. The
150 resulting output is consistent with what you get from the other
151 --*stat options.
152 files
154 Compute the dirstat numbers by counting the number of files
155 changed. Each changed file counts equally in the dirstat
156 analysis. This is the computationally cheapest --dirstat
157 behavior, since it does not have to look at the file contents
158 at all.
159 cumulative
161 Count changes in a child directory for the parent directory as
162 well. Note that when using cumulative, the sum of the
163 percentages reported may exceed 100%. The default
164 (non-cumulative) behavior can be specified with the
165 noncumulative parameter.
166 <limit>
168 An integer parameter specifies a cut-off percent (3% by
169 default). Directories contributing less than this percentage of
170 the changes are not shown in the output.
171 Example: The following will count changed files, while ignoring
173 directories with less than 10% of the total amount of changed
174 files, and accumulating child directory counts in the parent
175 directories: --dirstat=files,10,cumulative.
176 --cumulative
178 Synonym for --dirstat=cumulative
179 --dirstat-by-file[=<param1,param2>...]
181 Synonym for --dirstat=files,param1,param2...
182 --summary
184 Output a condensed summary of extended header information such as
185 creations, renames and mode changes.
186 --patch-with-stat
188 Synonym for -p --stat.
189 -z
191 When --raw, --numstat, --name-only or --name-status has been given,
192 do not munge pathnames and use NULs as output field terminators.
193 Without this option, pathnames with "unusual" characters are quoted
195 as explained for the configuration variable core.quotePath (see
196 git-config(1)).
197 --name-only
199 Show only names of changed files.
200 --name-status
202 Show only names and status of changed files. See the description of
203 the --diff-filter option on what the status letters mean.
204 --submodule[=<format>]
206 Specify how differences in submodules are shown. When specifying
207 --submodule=short the short format is used. This format just shows
208 the names of the commits at the beginning and end of the range.
209 When --submodule or --submodule=log is specified, the log format is
210 used. This format lists the commits in the range like git-
211 submodule(1) summary does. When --submodule=diff is specified, the
212 diff format is used. This format shows an inline diff of the
213 changes in the submodule contents between the commit range.
214 Defaults to diff.submodule or the short format if the config option
215 is unset.
216 --color[=<when>]
218 Show colored diff. --color (i.e. without =<when>) is the same as
219 --color=always. <when> can be one of always, never, or auto.
220 --no-color
222 Turn off colored diff. It is the same as --color=never.
223 --color-moved[=<mode>]
225 Moved lines of code are colored differently. The <mode> defaults to
226 no if the option is not given and to zebra if the option with no
227 mode is given. The mode must be one of:
228 no
230 Moved lines are not highlighted.
231 default
233 Is a synonym for zebra. This may change to a more sensible mode
234 in the future.
235 plain
237 Any line that is added in one location and was removed in
238 another location will be colored with color.diff.newMoved.
239 Similarly color.diff.oldMoved will be used for removed lines
240 that are added somewhere else in the diff. This mode picks up
241 any moved line, but it is not very useful in a review to
242 determine if a block of code was moved without permutation.
243 blocks
245 Blocks of moved text of at least 20 alphanumeric characters are
246 detected greedily. The detected blocks are painted using either
247 the color.diff.{old,new}Moved color. Adjacent blocks cannot be
248 told apart.
249 zebra
251 Blocks of moved text are detected as in blocks mode. The blocks
252 are painted using either the color.diff.{old,new}Moved color or
253 color.diff.{old,new}MovedAlternative. The change between the
254 two colors indicates that a new block was detected.
255 dimmed-zebra
257 Similar to zebra, but additional dimming of uninteresting parts
258 of moved code is performed. The bordering lines of two adjacent
259 blocks are considered interesting, the rest is uninteresting.
260 dimmed_zebra is a deprecated synonym.
261 --no-color-moved
263 Turn off move detection. This can be used to override configuration
264 settings. It is the same as --color-moved=no.
265 --color-moved-ws=<modes>
267 This configures how whitespace is ignored when performing the move
268 detection for --color-moved. These modes can be given as a comma
269 separated list:
270 no
272 Do not ignore whitespace when performing move detection.
273 ignore-space-at-eol
275 Ignore changes in whitespace at EOL.
276 ignore-space-change
278 Ignore changes in amount of whitespace. This ignores whitespace
279 at line end, and considers all other sequences of one or more
280 whitespace characters to be equivalent.
281 ignore-all-space
283 Ignore whitespace when comparing lines. This ignores
284 differences even if one line has whitespace where the other
285 line has none.
286 allow-indentation-change
288 Initially ignore any whitespace in the move detection, then
289 group the moved code blocks only into a block if the change in
290 whitespace is the same per line. This is incompatible with the
291 other modes.
292 --no-color-moved-ws
294 Do not ignore whitespace when performing move detection. This can
295 be used to override configuration settings. It is the same as
296 --color-moved-ws=no.
297 --word-diff[=<mode>]
299 Show a word diff, using the <mode> to delimit changed words. By
300 default, words are delimited by whitespace; see --word-diff-regex
301 below. The <mode> defaults to plain, and must be one of:
302 color
304 Highlight changed words using only colors. Implies --color.
305 plain
307 Show words as [-removed-] and {+added+}. Makes no attempts to
308 escape the delimiters if they appear in the input, so the
309 output may be ambiguous.
310 porcelain
312 Use a special line-based format intended for script
313 consumption. Added/removed/unchanged runs are printed in the
314 usual unified diff format, starting with a +/-/` ` character at
315 the beginning of the line and extending to the end of the line.
316 Newlines in the input are represented by a tilde ~ on a line of
317 its own.
318 none
320 Disable word diff again.
321 Note that despite the name of the first mode, color is used to
323 highlight the changed parts in all modes if enabled.
324 --word-diff-regex=<regex>
326 Use <regex> to decide what a word is, instead of considering runs
327 of non-whitespace to be a word. Also implies --word-diff unless it
328 was already enabled.
329 Every non-overlapping match of the <regex> is considered a word.
331 Anything between these matches is considered whitespace and
332 ignored(!) for the purposes of finding differences. You may want to
333 append |[^[:space:]] to your regular expression to make sure that
334 it matches all non-whitespace characters. A match that contains a
335 newline is silently truncated(!) at the newline.
336 For example, --word-diff-regex=. will treat each character as a
338 word and, correspondingly, show differences character by character.
339 The regex can also be set via a diff driver or configuration
341 option, see gitattributes(5) or git-config(1). Giving it explicitly
342 overrides any diff driver or configuration setting. Diff drivers
343 override configuration settings.
344 --color-words[=<regex>]
346 Equivalent to --word-diff=color plus (if a regex was specified)
347 --word-diff-regex=<regex>.
348 --no-renames
350 Turn off rename detection, even when the configuration file gives
351 the default to do so.
352 --[no-]rename-empty
354 Whether to use empty blobs as rename source.
355 --check
357 Warn if changes introduce conflict markers or whitespace errors.
358 What are considered whitespace errors is controlled by
359 core.whitespace configuration. By default, trailing whitespaces
360 (including lines that consist solely of whitespaces) and a space
361 character that is immediately followed by a tab character inside
362 the initial indent of the line are considered whitespace errors.
363 Exits with non-zero status if problems are found. Not compatible
364 with --exit-code.
365 --ws-error-highlight=<kind>
367 Highlight whitespace errors in the context, old or new lines of the
368 diff. Multiple values are separated by comma, none resets previous
369 values, default reset the list to new and all is a shorthand for
370 old,new,context. When this option is not given, and the
371 configuration variable diff.wsErrorHighlight is not set, only
372 whitespace errors in new lines are highlighted. The whitespace
373 errors are colored with color.diff.whitespace.
374 --full-index
376 Instead of the first handful of characters, show the full pre- and
377 post-image blob object names on the "index" line when generating
378 patch format output.
379 --binary
381 In addition to --full-index, output a binary diff that can be
382 applied with git-apply. Implies --patch.
383 --abbrev[=<n>]
385 Instead of showing the full 40-byte hexadecimal object name in
386 diff-raw format output and diff-tree header lines, show the
387 shortest prefix that is at least <n> hexdigits long that uniquely
388 refers the object. In diff-patch output format, --full-index takes
389 higher precedence, i.e. if --full-index is specified, full blob
390 names will be shown regardless of --abbrev. Non default number of
391 digits can be specified with --abbrev=<n>.
392 -B[<n>][/<m>], --break-rewrites[=[<n>][/<m>]]
394 Break complete rewrite changes into pairs of delete and create.
395 This serves two purposes:
396 It affects the way a change that amounts to a total rewrite of a
398 file not as a series of deletion and insertion mixed together with
399 a very few lines that happen to match textually as the context, but
400 as a single deletion of everything old followed by a single
401 insertion of everything new, and the number m controls this aspect
402 of the -B option (defaults to 60%). -B/70% specifies that less
403 than 30% of the original should remain in the result for Git to
404 consider it a total rewrite (i.e. otherwise the resulting patch
405 will be a series of deletion and insertion mixed together with
406 context lines).
407 When used with -M, a totally-rewritten file is also considered as
409 the source of a rename (usually -M only considers a file that
410 disappeared as the source of a rename), and the number n controls
411 this aspect of the -B option (defaults to 50%). -B20% specifies
412 that a change with addition and deletion compared to 20% or more of
413 the file’s size are eligible for being picked up as a possible
414 source of a rename to another file.
415 -M[<n>], --find-renames[=<n>]
417 Detect renames. If n is specified, it is a threshold on the
418 similarity index (i.e. amount of addition/deletions compared to the
419 file’s size). For example, -M90% means Git should consider a
420 delete/add pair to be a rename if more than 90% of the file hasn’t
421 changed. Without a % sign, the number is to be read as a fraction,
422 with a decimal point before it. I.e., -M5 becomes 0.5, and is thus
423 the same as -M50%. Similarly, -M05 is the same as -M5%. To limit
424 detection to exact renames, use -M100%. The default similarity
425 index is 50%.
426 -C[<n>], --find-copies[=<n>]
428 Detect copies as well as renames. See also --find-copies-harder. If
429 n is specified, it has the same meaning as for -M<n>.
430 --find-copies-harder
432 For performance reasons, by default, -C option finds copies only if
433 the original file of the copy was modified in the same changeset.
434 This flag makes the command inspect unmodified files as candidates
435 for the source of copy. This is a very expensive operation for
436 large projects, so use it with caution. Giving more than one -C
437 option has the same effect.
438 -D, --irreversible-delete
440 Omit the preimage for deletes, i.e. print only the header but not
441 the diff between the preimage and /dev/null. The resulting patch is
442 not meant to be applied with patch or git apply; this is solely for
443 people who want to just concentrate on reviewing the text after the
444 change. In addition, the output obviously lacks enough information
445 to apply such a patch in reverse, even manually, hence the name of
446 the option.
447 When used together with -B, omit also the preimage in the deletion
449 part of a delete/create pair.
450 -l<num>
452 The -M and -C options require O(n^2) processing time where n is the
453 number of potential rename/copy targets. This option prevents
454 rename/copy detection from running if the number of rename/copy
455 targets exceeds the specified number.
456 --diff-filter=[(A|C|D|M|R|T|U|X|B)...[*]]
458 Select only files that are Added (A), Copied (C), Deleted (D),
459 Modified (M), Renamed (R), have their type (i.e. regular file,
460 symlink, submodule, ...) changed (T), are Unmerged (U), are Unknown
461 (X), or have had their pairing Broken (B). Any combination of the
462 filter characters (including none) can be used. When *
463 (All-or-none) is added to the combination, all paths are selected
464 if there is any file that matches other criteria in the comparison;
465 if there is no file that matches other criteria, nothing is
466 selected.
467 Also, these upper-case letters can be downcased to exclude. E.g.
469 --diff-filter=ad excludes added and deleted paths.
470 Note that not all diffs can feature all types. For instance, diffs
472 from the index to the working tree can never have Added entries
473 (because the set of paths included in the diff is limited by what
474 is in the index). Similarly, copied and renamed entries cannot
475 appear if detection for those types is disabled.
476 -S<string>
478 Look for differences that change the number of occurrences of the
479 specified string (i.e. addition/deletion) in a file. Intended for
480 the scripter’s use.
481 It is useful when you’re looking for an exact block of code (like a
483 struct), and want to know the history of that block since it first
484 came into being: use the feature iteratively to feed the
485 interesting block in the preimage back into -S, and keep going
486 until you get the very first version of the block.
487 Binary files are searched as well.
489 -G<regex>
491 Look for differences whose patch text contains added/removed lines
492 that match <regex>.
493 To illustrate the difference between -S<regex> --pickaxe-regex and
495 -G<regex>, consider a commit with the following diff in the same
496 file:
497 + return frotz(nitfol, two->ptr, 1, 0);
499 ...
500 - hit = frotz(nitfol, mf2.ptr, 1, 0);
501 While git log -G"frotz\(nitfol" will show this commit, git log
503 -S"frotz\(nitfol" --pickaxe-regex will not (because the number of
504 occurrences of that string did not change).
505 Unless --text is supplied patches of binary files without a
507 textconv filter will be ignored.
508 See the pickaxe entry in gitdiffcore(7) for more information.
510 --find-object=<object-id>
512 Look for differences that change the number of occurrences of the
513 specified object. Similar to -S, just the argument is different in
514 that it doesn’t search for a specific string but for a specific
515 object id.
516 The object can be a blob or a submodule commit. It implies the -t
518 option in git-log to also find trees.
519 --pickaxe-all
521 When -S or -G finds a change, show all the changes in that
522 changeset, not just the files that contain the change in <string>.
523 --pickaxe-regex
525 Treat the <string> given to -S as an extended POSIX regular
526 expression to match.
527 -O<orderfile>
529 Control the order in which files appear in the output. This
530 overrides the diff.orderFile configuration variable (see git-
531 config(1)). To cancel diff.orderFile, use -O/dev/null.
532 The output order is determined by the order of glob patterns in
534 <orderfile>. All files with pathnames that match the first pattern
535 are output first, all files with pathnames that match the second
536 pattern (but not the first) are output next, and so on. All files
537 with pathnames that do not match any pattern are output last, as if
538 there was an implicit match-all pattern at the end of the file. If
539 multiple pathnames have the same rank (they match the same pattern
540 but no earlier patterns), their output order relative to each other
541 is the normal order.
542 <orderfile> is parsed as follows:
544 • Blank lines are ignored, so they can be used as separators for
546 readability.
547 • Lines starting with a hash ("#") are ignored, so they can be
549 used for comments. Add a backslash ("\") to the beginning of
550 the pattern if it starts with a hash.
551 • Each other line contains a single pattern.
553 Patterns have the same syntax and semantics as patterns used for
555 fnmatch(3) without the FNM_PATHNAME flag, except a pathname also
556 matches a pattern if removing any number of the final pathname
557 components matches the pattern. For example, the pattern "foo*bar"
558 matches "fooasdfbar" and "foo/bar/baz/asdf" but not "foobarx".
559 --skip-to=<file>, --rotate-to=<file>
561 Discard the files before the named <file> from the output (i.e.
562 skip to), or move them to the end of the output (i.e. rotate to).
563 These were invented primarily for use of the git difftool command,
564 and may not be very useful otherwise.
565 -R
567 Swap two inputs; that is, show differences from index or on-disk
568 file to tree contents.
569 --relative[=<path>], --no-relative
571 When run from a subdirectory of the project, it can be told to
572 exclude changes outside the directory and show pathnames relative
573 to it with this option. When you are not in a subdirectory (e.g. in
574 a bare repository), you can name which subdirectory to make the
575 output relative to by giving a <path> as an argument.
576 --no-relative can be used to countermand both diff.relative config
577 option and previous --relative.
578 -a, --text
580 Treat all files as text.
581 --ignore-cr-at-eol
583 Ignore carriage-return at the end of line when doing a comparison.
584 --ignore-space-at-eol
586 Ignore changes in whitespace at EOL.
587 -b, --ignore-space-change
589 Ignore changes in amount of whitespace. This ignores whitespace at
590 line end, and considers all other sequences of one or more
591 whitespace characters to be equivalent.
592 -w, --ignore-all-space
594 Ignore whitespace when comparing lines. This ignores differences
595 even if one line has whitespace where the other line has none.
596 --ignore-blank-lines
598 Ignore changes whose lines are all blank.
599 -I<regex>, --ignore-matching-lines=<regex>
601 Ignore changes whose all lines match <regex>. This option may be
602 specified more than once.
603 --inter-hunk-context=<lines>
605 Show the context between diff hunks, up to the specified number of
606 lines, thereby fusing hunks that are close to each other. Defaults
607 to diff.interHunkContext or 0 if the config option is unset.
608 -W, --function-context
610 Show whole function as context lines for each change. The function
611 names are determined in the same way as git diff works out patch
612 hunk headers (see Defining a custom hunk-header in
613 gitattributes(5)).
614 --exit-code
616 Make the program exit with codes similar to diff(1). That is, it
617 exits with 1 if there were differences and 0 means no differences.
618 --quiet
620 Disable all output of the program. Implies --exit-code.
621 --ext-diff
623 Allow an external diff helper to be executed. If you set an
624 external diff driver with gitattributes(5), you need to use this
625 option with git-log(1) and friends.
626 --no-ext-diff
628 Disallow external diff drivers.
629 --textconv, --no-textconv
631 Allow (or disallow) external text conversion filters to be run when
632 comparing binary files. See gitattributes(5) for details. Because
633 textconv filters are typically a one-way conversion, the resulting
634 diff is suitable for human consumption, but cannot be applied. For
635 this reason, textconv filters are enabled by default only for git-
636 diff(1) and git-log(1), but not for git-format-patch(1) or diff
637 plumbing commands.
638 --ignore-submodules[=<when>]
640 Ignore changes to submodules in the diff generation. <when> can be
641 either "none", "untracked", "dirty" or "all", which is the default.
642 Using "none" will consider the submodule modified when it either
643 contains untracked or modified files or its HEAD differs from the
644 commit recorded in the superproject and can be used to override any
645 settings of the ignore option in git-config(1) or gitmodules(5).
646 When "untracked" is used submodules are not considered dirty when
647 they only contain untracked content (but they are still scanned for
648 modified content). Using "dirty" ignores all changes to the work
649 tree of submodules, only changes to the commits stored in the
650 superproject are shown (this was the behavior until 1.7.0). Using
651 "all" hides all changes to submodules.
652 --src-prefix=<prefix>
654 Show the given source prefix instead of "a/".
655 --dst-prefix=<prefix>
657 Show the given destination prefix instead of "b/".
658 --no-prefix
660 Do not show any source or destination prefix.
661 --line-prefix=<prefix>
663 Prepend an additional prefix to every line of output.
664 --ita-invisible-in-index
666 By default entries added by "git add -N" appear as an existing
667 empty file in "git diff" and a new file in "git diff --cached".
668 This option makes the entry appear as a new file in "git diff" and
669 non-existent in "git diff --cached". This option could be reverted
670 with --ita-visible-in-index. Both options are experimental and
671 could be removed in future.
672 For more detailed explanation on these common options, see also
674 gitdiffcore(7).
675 -1 --base, -2 --ours, -3 --theirs, -0
677 Diff against the "base" version, "our branch" or "their branch"
678 respectively. With these options, diffs for merged entries are not
679 shown.
680 The default is to diff against our branch (-2) and the cleanly
682 resolved paths. The option -0 can be given to omit diff output for
683 unmerged entries and just show "Unmerged".
684 -c, --cc
686 This compares stage 2 (our branch), stage 3 (their branch) and the
687 working tree file and outputs a combined diff, similar to the way
688 diff-tree shows a merge commit with these flags.
689 -q
691 Remain silent even on nonexistent files
692
694 The raw output format from "git-diff-index", "git-diff-tree",
695 "git-diff-files" and "git diff --raw" are very similar.
696 These commands all compare two sets of things; what is compared
698 differs:
699 git-diff-index <tree-ish>
701 compares the <tree-ish> and the files on the filesystem.
702 git-diff-index --cached <tree-ish>
704 compares the <tree-ish> and the index.
705 git-diff-tree [-r] <tree-ish-1> <tree-ish-2> [<pattern>...]
707 compares the trees named by the two arguments.
708 git-diff-files [<pattern>...]
710 compares the index and the files on the filesystem.
711 The "git-diff-tree" command begins its output by printing the hash of
713 what is being compared. After that, all the commands print one output
714 line per changed file.
715 An output line is formatted this way:
717 in-place edit :100644 100644 bcd1234 0123456 M file0
719 copy-edit :100644 100644 abcd123 1234567 C68 file1 file2
720 rename-edit :100644 100644 abcd123 1234567 R86 file1 file3
721 create :000000 100644 0000000 1234567 A file4
722 delete :100644 000000 1234567 0000000 D file5
723 unmerged :000000 000000 0000000 0000000 U file6
724 That is, from the left to the right:
726 1. a colon.
728 2. mode for "src"; 000000 if creation or unmerged.
730 3. a space.
732 4. mode for "dst"; 000000 if deletion or unmerged.
734 5. a space.
736 6. sha1 for "src"; 0{40} if creation or unmerged.
738 7. a space.
740 8. sha1 for "dst"; 0{40} if creation, unmerged or "look at work tree".
742 9. a space.
744 10. status, followed by optional "score" number.
746 11. a tab or a NUL when -z option is used.
748 12. path for "src"
750 13. a tab or a NUL when -z option is used; only exists for C or R.
752 14. path for "dst"; only exists for C or R.
754 15. an LF or a NUL when -z option is used, to terminate the record.
756 Possible status letters are:
758 • A: addition of a file
760 • C: copy of a file into a new one
762 • D: deletion of a file
764 • M: modification of the contents or mode of a file
766 • R: renaming of a file
768 • T: change in the type of the file
770 • U: file is unmerged (you must complete the merge before it can be
772 committed)
773 • X: "unknown" change type (most probably a bug, please report it)
775 Status letters C and R are always followed by a score (denoting the
777 percentage of similarity between the source and target of the move or
778 copy). Status letter M may be followed by a score (denoting the
779 percentage of dissimilarity) for file rewrites.
780 <sha1> is shown as all 0’s if a file is new on the filesystem and it is
782 out of sync with the index.
783 Example:
785 :100644 100644 5be4a4a 0000000 M file.c
787 Without the -z option, pathnames with "unusual" characters are quoted
789 as explained for the configuration variable core.quotePath (see git-
790 config(1)). Using -z the filename is output verbatim and the line is
791 terminated by a NUL byte.
792
794 "git-diff-tree", "git-diff-files" and "git-diff --raw" can take -c or
795 --cc option to generate diff output also for merge commits. The output
796 differs from the format described above in the following way:
797 1. there is a colon for each parent
799 2. there are more "src" modes and "src" sha1
801 3. status is concatenated status characters for each parent
803 4. no optional "score" number
805 5. tab-separated pathname(s) of the file
807 For -c and --cc, only the destination or final path is shown even if
809 the file was renamed on any side of history. With --combined-all-paths,
810 the name of the path in each parent is shown followed by the name of
811 the path in the merge commit.
812 Examples for -c and --cc without --combined-all-paths:
814 ::100644 100644 100644 fabadb8 cc95eb0 4866510 MM desc.c
816 ::100755 100755 100755 52b7a2d 6d1ac04 d2ac7d7 RM bar.sh
817 ::100644 100644 100644 e07d6c5 9042e82 ee91881 RR phooey.c
818 Examples when --combined-all-paths added to either -c or --cc:
820 ::100644 100644 100644 fabadb8 cc95eb0 4866510 MM desc.c desc.c desc.c
822 ::100755 100755 100755 52b7a2d 6d1ac04 d2ac7d7 RM foo.sh bar.sh bar.sh
823 ::100644 100644 100644 e07d6c5 9042e82 ee91881 RR fooey.c fuey.c phooey.c
824 Note that combined diff lists only files which were modified from all
826 parents.
827
829 Running git-diff(1), git-log(1), git-show(1), git-diff-index(1), git-
830 diff-tree(1), or git-diff-files(1) with the -p option produces patch
831 text. You can customize the creation of patch text via the
832 GIT_EXTERNAL_DIFF and the GIT_DIFF_OPTS environment variables (see
833 git(1)).
834 What the -p option produces is slightly different from the traditional
836 diff format:
837 1. It is preceded with a "git diff" header that looks like this:
839 diff --git a/file1 b/file2
841 The a/ and b/ filenames are the same unless rename/copy is
843 involved. Especially, even for a creation or a deletion, /dev/null
844 is not used in place of the a/ or b/ filenames.
845 When rename/copy is involved, file1 and file2 show the name of the
847 source file of the rename/copy and the name of the file that
848 rename/copy produces, respectively.
849 2. It is followed by one or more extended header lines:
851 old mode <mode>
853 new mode <mode>
854 deleted file mode <mode>
855 new file mode <mode>
856 copy from <path>
857 copy to <path>
858 rename from <path>
859 rename to <path>
860 similarity index <number>
861 dissimilarity index <number>
862 index <hash>..<hash> <mode>
863 File modes are printed as 6-digit octal numbers including the file
865 type and file permission bits.
866 Path names in extended headers do not include the a/ and b/
868 prefixes.
869 The similarity index is the percentage of unchanged lines, and the
871 dissimilarity index is the percentage of changed lines. It is a
872 rounded down integer, followed by a percent sign. The similarity
873 index value of 100% is thus reserved for two equal files, while
874 100% dissimilarity means that no line from the old file made it
875 into the new one.
876 The index line includes the blob object names before and after the
878 change. The <mode> is included if the file mode does not change;
879 otherwise, separate lines indicate the old and the new mode.
880 3. Pathnames with "unusual" characters are quoted as explained for the
882 configuration variable core.quotePath (see git-config(1)).
883 4. All the file1 files in the output refer to files before the commit,
885 and all the file2 files refer to files after the commit. It is
886 incorrect to apply each change to each file sequentially. For
887 example, this patch will swap a and b:
888 diff --git a/a b/b
890 rename from a
891 rename to b
892 diff --git a/b b/a
893 rename from b
894 rename to a
895
897 Any diff-generating command can take the -c or --cc option to produce a
898 combined diff when showing a merge. This is the default format when
899 showing merges with git-diff(1) or git-show(1). Note also that you can
900 give suitable --diff-merges option to any of these commands to force
901 generation of diffs in specific format.
902 A "combined diff" format looks like this:
904 diff --combined describe.c
906 index fabadb8,cc95eb0..4866510
907 --- a/describe.c
908 +++ b/describe.c
909 @@@ -98,20 -98,12 +98,20 @@@
910 return (a_date > b_date) ? -1 : (a_date == b_date) ? 0 : 1;
911 }
912 - static void describe(char *arg)
914 -static void describe(struct commit *cmit, int last_one)
915 ++static void describe(char *arg, int last_one)
916 {
917 + unsigned char sha1[20];
918 + struct commit *cmit;
919 struct commit_list *list;
920 static int initialized = 0;
921 struct commit_name *n;
922 + if (get_sha1(arg, sha1) < 0)
924 + usage(describe_usage);
925 + cmit = lookup_commit_reference(sha1);
926 + if (!cmit)
927 + usage(describe_usage);
928 +
929 if (!initialized) {
930 initialized = 1;
931 for_each_ref(get_name);
932 1. It is preceded with a "git diff" header, that looks like this (when
934 the -c option is used):
935 diff --combined file
937 or like this (when the --cc option is used):
939 diff --cc file
941 2. It is followed by one or more extended header lines (this example
943 shows a merge with two parents):
944 index <hash>,<hash>..<hash>
946 mode <mode>,<mode>..<mode>
947 new file mode <mode>
948 deleted file mode <mode>,<mode>
949 The mode <mode>,<mode>..<mode> line appears only if at least one of
951 the <mode> is different from the rest. Extended headers with
952 information about detected contents movement (renames and copying
953 detection) are designed to work with diff of two <tree-ish> and are
954 not used by combined diff format.
955 3. It is followed by two-line from-file/to-file header
957 --- a/file
959 +++ b/file
960 Similar to two-line header for traditional unified diff format,
962 /dev/null is used to signal created or deleted files.
963 However, if the --combined-all-paths option is provided, instead of
965 a two-line from-file/to-file you get a N+1 line from-file/to-file
966 header, where N is the number of parents in the merge commit
967 --- a/file
969 --- a/file
970 --- a/file
971 +++ b/file
972 This extended format can be useful if rename or copy detection is
974 active, to allow you to see the original name of the file in
975 different parents.
976 4. Chunk header format is modified to prevent people from accidentally
978 feeding it to patch -p1. Combined diff format was created for
979 review of merge commit changes, and was not meant to be applied.
980 The change is similar to the change in the extended index header:
981 @@@ <from-file-range> <from-file-range> <to-file-range> @@@
983 There are (number of parents + 1) @ characters in the chunk header
985 for combined diff format.
986 Unlike the traditional unified diff format, which shows two files A and
988 B with a single column that has - (minus — appears in A but removed in
989 B), + (plus — missing in A but added to B), or " " (space — unchanged)
990 prefix, this format compares two or more files file1, file2,... with
991 one file X, and shows how X differs from each of fileN. One column for
992 each of fileN is prepended to the output line to note how X’s line is
993 different from it.
994 A - character in the column N means that the line appears in fileN but
996 it does not appear in the result. A + character in the column N means
997 that the line appears in the result, and fileN does not have that line
998 (in other words, the line was added, from the point of view of that
999 parent).
1000 In the above example output, the function signature was changed from
1002 both files (hence two - removals from both file1 and file2, plus ++ to
1003 mean one line that was added does not appear in either file1 or file2).
1004 Also eight other lines are the same from file1 but do not appear in
1005 file2 (hence prefixed with +).
1006 When shown by git diff-tree -c, it compares the parents of a merge
1008 commit with the merge result (i.e. file1..fileN are the parents). When
1009 shown by git diff-files -c, it compares the two unresolved merge
1010 parents with the working tree file (i.e. file1 is stage 2 aka "our
1011 version", file2 is stage 3 aka "their version").
1012
1014 The --summary option describes newly added, deleted, renamed and copied
1015 files. The --stat option adds diffstat(1) graph to the output. These
1016 options can be combined with other options, such as -p, and are meant
1017 for human consumption.
1018 When showing a change that involves a rename or a copy, --stat output
1020 formats the pathnames compactly by combining common prefix and suffix
1021 of the pathnames. For example, a change that moves arch/i386/Makefile
1022 to arch/x86/Makefile while modifying 4 lines will be shown like this:
1023 arch/{i386 => x86}/Makefile | 4 +--
1025 The --numstat option gives the diffstat(1) information but is designed
1027 for easier machine consumption. An entry in --numstat output looks like
1028 this:
1029 1 2 README
1031 3 1 arch/{i386 => x86}/Makefile
1032 That is, from left to right:
1034 1. the number of added lines;
1036 2. a tab;
1038 3. the number of deleted lines;
1040 4. a tab;
1042 5. pathname (possibly with rename/copy information);
1044 6. a newline.
1046 When -z output option is in effect, the output is formatted this way:
1048 1 2 README NUL
1050 3 1 NUL arch/i386/Makefile NUL arch/x86/Makefile NUL
1051 That is:
1053 1. the number of added lines;
1055 2. a tab;
1057 3. the number of deleted lines;
1059 4. a tab;
1061 5. a NUL (only exists if renamed/copied);
1063 6. pathname in preimage;
1065 7. a NUL (only exists if renamed/copied);
1067 8. pathname in postimage (only exists if renamed/copied);
1069 9. a NUL.
1071 The extra NUL before the preimage path in renamed case is to allow
1073 scripts that read the output to tell if the current record being read
1074 is a single-path record or a rename/copy record without reading ahead.
1075 After reading added and deleted lines, reading up to NUL would yield
1076 the pathname, but if that is NUL, the record will show two paths.
1077
1079 Part of the git(1) suite
1080Git 2.31.1 2021-03-26 GIT-DIFF-FILES(1)