git-diff-files [-q] [-0|-1|-2|-3|-c|--cc|--no-index] [<common diff options>] [<path>…]
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 "git-diff-index" and "git-diff-tree".
-
-p
-
Generate patch (see section on generating patches)
-
-u
-
Synonym for "-p".
-
--raw
-
Generate the raw format.
-
--patch-with-raw
-
Synonym for "-p --raw".
-
--stat[=width[,name-width]]
-
Generate a diffstat. You can override the default
output width for 80-column terminal by "--stat=width".
The width of the filename part can be controlled by
giving another width to it separated by a comma.
-
--numstat
-
Similar to --stat, but shows number of added and
deleted lines in decimal notation and pathname without
abbreviation, to make it more machine friendly. For
binary files, outputs two - instead of saying
0 0.
-
--shortstat
-
Output only the last line of the --stat format containing total
number of modified files, as well as number of added and deleted
lines.
-
--summary
-
Output a condensed summary of extended header information
such as creations, renames and mode changes.
-
--patch-with-stat
-
Synonym for "-p --stat".
-
-z
-
\0 line termination on output
-
--name-only
-
Show only names of changed files.
-
--name-status
-
Show only names and status of changed files.
-
--color
-
Show colored diff.
-
--no-color
-
Turn off colored diff, even when the configuration file
gives the default to color output.
-
--color-words
-
Show colored word diff, i.e. color words which have changed.
-
--no-renames
-
Turn off rename detection, even when the configuration
file gives the default to do so.
-
--check
-
Warn if changes introduce trailing whitespace
or an indent that uses a space before a tab.
-
--full-index
-
Instead of the first handful characters, show full
object name of pre- and post-image blob on the "index"
line when generating a patch format output.
-
--binary
-
In addition to --full-index, output "binary diff" that
can be applied with "git apply".
-
--abbrev[=<n>]
-
Instead of showing the full 40-byte hexadecimal object
name in diff-raw format output and diff-tree header
lines, show only handful hexdigits prefix. This is
independent of --full-index option above, which controls
the diff-patch output format. Non default number of
digits can be specified with --abbrev=<n>.
-
-B
-
Break complete rewrite changes into pairs of delete and create.
-
-M
-
Detect renames.
-
-C
-
Detect copies as well as renames.
-
--diff-filter=[ACDMRTUXB*]
-
Select only files that are Added (A), Copied (C),
Deleted (D), Modified (M), Renamed (R), have their
type (mode) changed (T), are Unmerged (U), are
Unknown (X), or have had their pairing Broken (B).
Any combination of the filter characters may 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.
-
--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.
-
-l<num>
-
-M and -C options require O(n^2) processing time where n
is the number of potential rename/copy targets. This
option prevents rename/copy detection from running if
the number of rename/copy targets exceeds the specified
number.
-
-S<string>
-
Look for differences that contain the change in <string>.
-
--pickaxe-all
-
When -S finds a change, show all the changes in that
changeset, not just the files that contain the change
in <string>.
-
--pickaxe-regex
-
Make the <string> not a plain string but an extended POSIX
regex to match.
-
-O<orderfile>
-
Output the patch in the order specified in the
<orderfile>, which has one shell glob pattern per line.
-
-R
-
Swap two inputs; that is, show differences from index or
on-disk file to tree contents.
-
--text
-
Treat all files as text.
-
-a
-
Shorthand for "--text".
-
--ignore-space-at-eol
-
Ignore changes in white spaces at EOL.
-
--ignore-space-change
-
Ignore changes in amount of white space. This ignores white
space at line end, and consider all other sequences of one or
more white space characters to be equivalent.
-
-b
-
Shorthand for "--ignore-space-change".
-
--ignore-all-space
-
Ignore white space when comparing lines. This ignores
difference even if one line has white space where the other
line has none.
-
-w
-
Shorthand for "--ignore-all-space".
-
--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.
For more detailed explanation on these common options, see also
diffcore documentation.
-
-1 -2 -3 or --base --ours --theirs, and -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.
-
--no-index
-
Compare the two given files / directories.
-
-q
-
Remain silent even on nonexistent files
The output format from "git-diff-index", "git-diff-tree" and
"git-diff-files" 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.
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:
-
a colon.
-
mode for "src"; 000000 if creation or unmerged.
-
a space.
-
mode for "dst"; 000000 if deletion or unmerged.
-
a space.
-
sha1 for "src"; 0{40} if creation or unmerged.
-
a space.
-
sha1 for "dst"; 0{40} if creation, unmerged or "look at work tree".
-
a space.
-
status, followed by optional "score" number.
-
a tab or a NUL when -z option is used.
-
path for "src"
-
a tab or a NUL when -z option is used; only exists for C or R.
-
path for "dst"; only exists for C or R.
-
an LF or a NUL when -z option is used, to terminate the record.
<sha1> is shown as all 0's if a file is new on the filesystem
and it is out of sync with the index.
Example:
:100644 100644 5be4a4...... 000000...... M file.c
When -z option is not used, TAB, LF, and backslash characters
in pathnames are represented as \t, \n, and \\,
respectively.
"git-diff-tree" and "git-diff-files" 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:
-
there is a colon for each parent
-
there are more "src" modes and "src" sha1
-
status is concatenated status characters for each parent
-
no optional "score" number
-
single path, only for "dst"
Example:
::100644 100644 100644 fabadb8... cc95eb0... 4866510... MM describe.c
Note that combined diff lists only files which were modified from
all parents.
When "git-diff-index", "git-diff-tree", or "git-diff-files" are run
with a -p option, they do not produce the output described above;
instead they produce a patch file. You can customize the creation
of such patches via the GIT_EXTERNAL_DIFF and the GIT_DIFF_OPTS
environment variables.
What the -p option produces is slightly different from the traditional
diff format.
-
It is preceded with a "git diff" header, that looks like
this:
diff --git a/file1 b/file2
The a/ and b/ filenames are the same unless rename/copy is
involved. Especially, even for a creation or a deletion,
/dev/null is _not_ used in place of a/ or b/ filenames.
When rename/copy is involved, file1 and file2 show the
name of the source file of the rename/copy and the name of
the file that rename/copy produces, respectively.
-
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>
-
TAB, LF, double quote and backslash characters in pathnames
are represented as \t, \n, \" and \\, respectively.
If there is need for such substitution then the whole
pathname is put in double quotes.
git-diff-tree and git-diff-files can take -c or --cc option
to produce combined diff, which 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);
-
It is preceded with a "git diff" header, that looks like
this (when -c option is used):
or like this (when --cc option is used):
-
It is followed by one or more extended header lines
(this example shows a merge with two parents):
index <hash>,<hash>..<hash>
mode <mode>,<mode>..<mode>
new file mode <mode>
deleted file mode <mode>,<mode>
The mode <mode>,<mode>..<mode> line appears only if at least one of
the <mode> is different from the rest. Extended headers with
information about detected contents movement (renames and
copying detection) are designed to work with diff of two
<tree-ish> and are not used by combined diff format.
-
It is followed by two-line from-file/to-file header
Similar to two-line header for traditional unified diff
format, /dev/null is used to signal created or deleted
files.
-
Chunk header format is modified to prevent people from
accidentally feeding it to patch -p1. Combined diff format
was created for review of merge commit changes, and was not
meant for apply. The change is similar to the change in the
extended index header:
@@@ <from-file-range> <from-file-range> <to-file-range> @@@
There are (number of parents + 1) @ characters in the chunk
header for combined diff format.
Unlike the traditional unified diff format, which shows two
files A and B with a single column that has - (minus —
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 last file,
and fileN does not have that line (in other words, the line was
added, from the point of view of that parent).
In the above example output, the function signature was changed
from both files (hence two - removals from both file1 and
file2, plus ++ to mean one line that was added does not appear
in either file1 nor file2). Also two 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").
Written by Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
Documentation by David Greaves, Junio C Hamano and the git-list <git@vger.kernel.org>.