Manual: git-diff-index
GIT-DIFF-INDEX(1) Git Manual GIT-DIFF-INDEX(1)
NAME
git-diff-index - Compare a tree to the working tree or index
SYNOPSIS
git diff-index [-m] [--cached] [--merge-base] [] [...]
DESCRIPTION
Compare the content and mode of the blobs found in a tree object with the corresponding tracked files
in the working tree, or with the corresponding paths in the index. When arguments are present,
compare only paths matching those patterns. Otherwise all tracked files are compared.
OPTIONS
-p, -u, --patch
Generate patch (see the section called âGENERATING PATCH TEXT WITH -Pâ).
-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, --unified=
Generate diffs with lines of context instead of the usual three. Implies --patch.
--output=
Output to a specific file instead of stdout.
--output-indicator-new=, --output-indicator-old=, --output-indicator-context=
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=
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 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[=[,[,]]]
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 . The width of the filename part can be
limited by giving another width after a comma or by setting
diff.statNameWidth=. The width of the graph part can be limited by using
--stat-graph-width= or by setting diff.statGraphWidth=. 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 , you
can limit the output to the first lines, followed by ... if there are more.
These parameters can also be set individually with --stat-width=,
--stat-name-width= and --stat-count=.
--compact-summary
Output a condensed summary of extended header information such as file creations or deletions
("new" or "gone", optionally +l if itâs 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 [,...], --dirstat[=,...]
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.
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[=,...]
Synonym for --dirstat=files,,....
--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[=]
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[=]
Show colored diff. --color (i.e. without =) is the same as --color=always. can be
one of always, never, or auto.
--no-color
Turn off colored diff. It is the same as --color=never.
--color-moved[=]
Moved lines of code are colored differently. The 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=,...
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[=]
By default, words are delimited by whitespace; see --word-diff-regex below. The 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=
Use 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 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[=]
Equivalent to --word-diff=color plus (if a regex was specified) --word-diff-regex=.
--no-renames
Turn off rename detection, even when the configuration file gives the default to do so.
--rename-empty, --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=
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[=]
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 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=.
-B[][/], --break-rewrites[=[][/]]
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 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 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 fileâs size are eligible for being picked up as a
possible source of a rename to another file.
-M[], --find-renames[=]
Detect renames. If is specified, it is a threshold on the similarity index (i.e. amount of
addition/deletions compared to the fileâs size). For example, -M90% means Git should consider a
delete/add pair to be a rename if more than 90% of the file hasnât 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[], --find-copies[=]
Detect copies as well as renames. See also --find-copies-harder. If is specified, it has the
same meaning as for -M.
--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
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
Look for differences that change the number of occurrences of the specified (i.e.
addition/deletion) in a file. Intended for the scripterâs use.
It is useful when youâre 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
Look for differences whose patch text contains added/removed lines that match .
To illustrate the difference between -S --pickaxe-regex and -G, 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=
Look for differences that change the number of occurrences of the specified object. Similar to
-S, just the argument is different in that it doesnât 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 .
--pickaxe-regex
Treat the given to -S as an extended POSIX regular expression to match.
-O
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 . 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.
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=, --rotate-to=
Discard the files before the named 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[=], --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 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, --ignore-matching-lines=
Ignore changes whose all lines match . This option may be specified more than once.
--inter-hunk-context=
Show the context between diff hunks, up to the specified 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..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=
Show the given source instead of "a/".
--dst-prefix=
Show the given destination 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=
Prepend an additional 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.
--max-depth=
For each pathspec given on command line, descend at most levels of directories. A value
of -1 means no limit. Cannot be combined with wildcards in the pathspec. Given a tree containing
foo/bar/baz, the following list shows the matches generated by each set of options:
⢠--max-depth=0 -- foo: foo
⢠--max-depth=1 -- foo: foo/bar
⢠--max-depth=1 -- foo/bar: foo/bar/baz
⢠--max-depth=1 -- foo foo/bar: foo/bar/baz
⢠--max-depth=2 -- foo: foo/bar/baz
If no pathspec is given, the depth is measured as if all top-level entries were specified. Note
that this is different than measuring from the root, in that --max-depth=0 would still return
foo. This allows you to still limit depth while asking for a subset of the top-level entries.
Note that this option is only supported for diffs between tree objects, not against the index or
working tree.
For more detailed explanation on these common options, see also gitdiffcore(7).
The id of a tree object to diff against.
--cached
Do not consider the on-disk file at all.
--merge-base
Instead of comparing directly, use the merge base between and HEAD instead.
must be a commit.
-m
By default, files recorded in the index but not checked out are reported as deleted. This flag
makes git diff-index say that all non-checked-out files are up to date.
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
compares the and the files on the filesystem.
git-diff-index --cached
compares the and the index.
git-diff-tree [-r] [...]
compares the trees named by the two arguments.
git-diff-files [...]
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 0âs 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
new mode
deleted file mode
new file mode
copy from
copy to
rename from
rename to
similarity index
dissimilarity index
index ..
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 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 ,..
mode ,..
new file mode
deleted file mode ,
The mode ,.. line appears only if at least one of the 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 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:
@@@ @@@
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 â appears in A but removed in B), + (plus â missing in A but added to B), or " " (space
â 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 Xâs 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.
OPERATING MODES
You can choose whether you want to trust the index file entirely (using the --cached flag) or ask the
diff logic to show any files that donât match the stat state as being "tentatively changed". Both of
these operations are very useful indeed.
CACHED MODE
If --cached is specified, it allows you to ask:
show me the differences between HEAD and the current index
contents (the ones I'd write using 'git write-tree')
For example, letâs say that you have worked on your working directory, updated some files in the
index and are ready to commit. You want to see exactly what you are going to commit, without having
to write a new tree object and compare it that way, and to do that, you just do
git diff-index --cached HEAD
Example: letâs say I had renamed commit.c to git-commit.c, and I had done an update-index to make
that effective in the index file. git diff-files wouldnât show anything at all, since the index file
matches my working directory. But doing a git diff-index does:
torvalds@ppc970:~/git> git diff-index --cached HEAD
:100644 000000 4161aecc6700a2eb579e842af0b7f22b98443f74 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000 D commit.c
:000000 100644 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000 4161aecc6700a2eb579e842af0b7f22b98443f74 A git-commit.c
You can see easily that the above is a rename.
In fact, git diff-index --cached should always be entirely equivalent to actually doing a git
write-tree and comparing that. Except this one is much nicer for the case where you just want to
check where you are.
So doing a git diff-index --cached is basically very useful when you are asking yourself "what have I
already marked for being committed, and whatâs the difference to a previous tree".
NON-CACHED MODE
The "non-cached" mode takes a different approach, and is potentially the more useful of the two in
that what it does canât be emulated with a git write-tree + git diff-tree. Thus thatâs the default
mode. The non-cached version asks the question:
show me the differences between HEAD and the currently checked out
tree - index contents _and_ files that aren't up to date
which is obviously a very useful question too, since that tells you what you could commit. Again, the
output matches the git diff-tree -r output to a tee, but with a twist.
The twist is that if some file doesnât match the index, we donât have a backing store thing for it,
and we use the magic "all-zero" sha1 to show that. So letâs say that you have edited kernel/sched.c,
but have not actually done a git update-index on it yet - there is no "object" associated with the
new state, and you get:
torvalds@ppc970:~/v2.6/linux> git diff-index --abbrev HEAD
:100644 100644 7476bb5ba 000000000 M kernel/sched.c
i.e., it shows that the tree has changed, and that kernel/sched.c is not up to date and may contain
new stuff. The all-zero sha1 means that to get the real diff, you need to look at the object in the
working directory directly rather than do an object-to-object diff.
Note
As with other commands of this type, git diff-index does not actually look at the contents of the
file at all. So maybe kernel/sched.c hasnât actually changed, and itâs just that you touched it.
In either case, itâs a note that you need to git update-index it to make the index be in sync.
Note
You can have a mixture of files show up as "has been updated" and "is still dirty in the working
directory" together. You can always tell which file is in which state, since the "has been
updated" ones show a valid sha1, and the "not in sync with the index" ones will always have the
special all-zero sha1.
GIT
Part of the git(1) suite
Git 2.53.0 03/02/2026 GIT-DIFF-INDEX(1)