git-diff-files(1) — Linux manual page

NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | OPTIONS | RAW OUTPUT FORMAT | DIFF FORMAT FOR MERGES | GENERATING PATCH TEXT WITH -P | COMBINED DIFF FORMAT | OTHER DIFF FORMATS | GIT | COLOPHON

GIT-DIFF-FILES(1)              Git Manual              GIT-DIFF-FILES(1)

NAME         top

       git-diff-files - Compares files in the working tree and the index

SYNOPSIS         top

       git diff-files [-q] [-0 | -1 | -2 | -3 | -c | --cc] [<common-diff-options>] [<path>...]

DESCRIPTION         top

       Compares the files in the working tree and the index. When paths
       are specified, compares only those named paths. Otherwise all
       entries in the index are compared. The output format is the same
       as for git diff-index and git diff-tree.

OPTIONS         top

       -p, -u, --patch
           Generate patch (see the section called “GENERATING PATCH TEXT
           WITH -P”).

       -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. This is the default.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

       --cumulative
           Synonym for --dirstat=cumulative

       --dirstat-by-file[=<param1,param2>...]
           Synonym for --dirstat=files,param1,param2...

       --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 names of changed files. 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 names and status of changed files. 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.

       --no-color
           Turn off colored diff. It is the same as --color=never.

       --color-moved[=<mode>]
           Moved lines of code are colored differently. 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=<modes>
           This configures how whitespace is ignored when performing the
           move detection for --color-moved. 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>]
           Show a word diff, using the <mode> to delimit changed words.
           By default, words are delimited by whitespace; see
           --word-diff-regex below. The <mode> defaults to plain, and
           must be one of:

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

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

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

           none
               Disable word diff again.

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

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

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

           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=<lines>
           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.

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

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

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

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

       --default-prefix
           Use the default source and destination prefixes ("a/" and
           "b/"). This is usually the default already, but may be used
           to override config such as diff.noprefix.

       --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, -0
           Diff against the "base" version, "our branch", or "their
           branch" respectively. With these options, diffs for merged
           entries are not shown.

           The default is to diff against our branch (-2) and the
           cleanly resolved paths. The option -0 can be given to omit
           diff output for unmerged entries and just show "Unmerged".

       -c, --cc
           This compares stage 2 (our branch), stage 3 (their branch),
           and the working tree file and outputs a combined diff,
           similar to the way diff-tree shows a merge commit with these
           flags.

       -q
           Remain silent even for nonexistent files

RAW OUTPUT FORMAT         top

       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         top

       "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         top

       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 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         top

       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         top

       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.

GIT         top

       Part of the git(1) suite

COLOPHON         top

       This page is part of the git (Git distributed version control
       system) project.  Information about the project can be found at
       ⟨http:https://git-scm.com/⟩.  If you have a bug report for this manual
       page, see ⟨http:https://git-scm.com/community⟩.  This page was obtained
       from the project's upstream Git repository
       ⟨https://github.com/git/git.git⟩ on 2023-12-22.  (At that time,
       the date of the most recent commit that was found in the
       repository was 2023-12-20.)  If you discover any rendering
       problems in this HTML version of the page, or you believe there
       is a better or more up-to-date source for the page, or you have
       corrections or improvements to the information in this COLOPHON
       (which is not part of the original manual page), send a mail to
       [email protected]

Git 2.43.0.174.g055bb6         2023-12-20              GIT-DIFF-FILES(1)

Pages that refer to this page: git(1)git-config(1)git-diff(1)git-diff-files(1)git-diff-index(1)git-diff-tree(1)git-log(1)git-ls-files(1)git-show(1)gitdiffcore(7)