GIT-DIFF(1)

okay bestie, welcome to git-diff(1) from the Git Manual 💖✨. This is literally the “show me what changed” command — main character energy of Git inspection. No cap, it compares all kinds of endpoints, and we’re gonna walk every form and every option together. 🫶

✨ NAME ✨

git-diff — show changes between commits, commit and working tree, etc. That’s the whole vibe: diffs, diffs, diffs. 💅

🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

git diff [<options>] [<commit>] [--] [<path>...]
git diff [<options>] --cached [--merge-base] [<commit>] [--] [<path>...]
git diff [<options>] [--merge-base] <commit> [<commit>...] <commit> [--] [<path>...]
git diff [<options>] <commit>...<commit> [--] [<path>...]
git diff [<options>] <blob> <blob>
git diff [<options>] --no-index [--] <path> <path> [<pathspec>...]

💖 DESCRIPTION 💖

Show changes between the working tree and the index or a tree, changes between the index and a tree, changes between two trees, changes resulting from a merge, changes between two blob objects, or changes between two files on disk. It’s giving “every kind of comparison you could want,” fr fr. 🌈

git diff [<options>] [--] [<path>...] — this form is to view the changes you made relative to the index (the staging area for the next commit). In other words, the differences are what you could tell Git to further add to the index but you still haven’t. You can stage these changes by using git-add(1). It’s the “bestie, what’s not staged yet?” view. 💅
git diff [<options>] --no-index [--] <path> <path> [<pathspec>...] — this form is to compare the given two paths on the filesystem. You can omit the --no-index option when running the command in a working tree controlled by Git and at least one of the paths points outside the working tree, or when running the command outside a working tree controlled by Git. This form implies --exit-code. If both paths point to directories, additional pathspecs may be provided. These will limit the files included in the difference. All such pathspecs must be relative as they apply to both sides of the diff. Outside-the-repo energy, but make it precise. 🦋
git diff [<options>] --cached [--merge-base] [<commit>] [--] [<path>...] — this form is to view the changes you staged for the next commit relative to the named <commit>. Typically you would want comparison with the latest commit, so if you do not give <commit>, it defaults to HEAD. If HEAD does not exist (e.g. unborn branches) and <commit> is not given, it shows all staged changes. --staged is a synonym of --cached. Staged-changes reveal, iconic. ✨

If --merge-base is given, instead of using <commit>, use the merge base of <commit> and HEAD. git diff --cached --merge-base A is equivalent to git diff --cached $(git merge-base A HEAD). No cap, that’s the exact equivalence. 🫶

git diff [<options>] [--merge-base] <commit> [--] [<path>...] — this form is to view the changes you have in your working tree relative to the named <commit>. You can use HEAD to compare it with the latest commit, or a branch name to compare with the tip of a different branch. Working-tree chaos vs. a commit? Yes please. 🎀

If --merge-base is given, instead of using <commit>, use the merge base of <commit> and HEAD. git diff --merge-base A is equivalent to git diff $(git merge-base A HEAD). Literally that. 💜

git diff [<options>] [--merge-base] <commit> <commit> [--] [<path>...] — this is to view the changes between two arbitrary <commit>. Two commits walk into a diff… 😭

If --merge-base is given, use the merge base of the two commits for the “before” side. git diff --merge-base A B is equivalent to git diff $(git merge-base A B) B. Keep that exact, bestie. 🧚

git diff [<options>] <commit> <commit>...<commit> [--] [<path>...] — this form is to view the results of a merge commit. The first listed <commit> must be the merge itself; the remaining two or more commits should be its parents. Convenient ways to produce the desired set of revisions are to use the suffixes @ and ^!. If A is a merge commit, then git diff A A^@, git diff A^! and git show A all give the same combined diff. Combined diff slay. 🔥
git diff [<options>] <commit>..<commit> [--] [<path>...] — this is synonymous to the earlier form (without the ..) for viewing the changes between two arbitrary <commit>. If <commit> on one side is omitted, it will have the same effect as using HEAD instead. Range-ish notation, but remember the diff is still about endpoints. ⭐
git diff [<options>] <commit>...<commit> [--] [<path>...] — this form is to view the changes on the branch containing and up to the second <commit>, starting at a common ancestor of both <commit>. git diff A...B is equivalent to git diff $(git merge-base A B) B. You can omit any one of <commit>, which has the same effect as using HEAD instead. Three-dot notation has entered the chat. 💀

Just in case you are doing something exotic, it should be noted that all of the <commit> in the above description, except in the --merge-base case and in the last two forms that use .. notations, can be any <tree>. A tree of interest is the one pointed to by the ref named AUTO_MERGE, which is written by the ort merge strategy upon hitting merge conflicts (see git-merge(1)). Comparing the working tree with AUTO_MERGE shows changes you’ve made so far to resolve textual conflicts (see the examples below). This is lowkey the conflict-resolution bestie view. 🫶

For a more complete list of ways to spell <commit>, see “SPECIFYING REVISIONS” section in gitrevisions(7). However, diff is about comparing two endpoints, not ranges, and the range notations (<commit>..<commit> and <commit>...<commit>) do not mean a range as defined in the “SPECIFYING RANGES” section in gitrevisions(7). Important vibe check: endpoints, not ranges. 🚨

git diff [<options>] <blob> <blob> — this form is to view the differences between the raw contents of two blob objects. Raw blob-on-blob comparison, no working tree required. 🦋

🎀 OPTIONS 🎀

-p, -u, --patch — generate patch (see the section called “GENERATING PATCH TEXT WITH -P”). This is the default. Iconic default behavior. 💅
-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. Quiet mode, but make it strategic. 🙈
-U<n>, --unified=<n> — generate diffs with <n> lines of context. The number of context lines defaults to diff.context or 3 if the configuration variable is unset. (-U without <n> is silently accepted as a synonym for -p due to a historical accident). Implies --patch. Context lines: the cozy margin around the chaos. 🎀
--output=<file> — output to a specific file instead of stdout. File output era. 📁
--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. Custom little markers for your patch aesthetic. ✨
--raw — generate the diff in raw format. Raw format, no filter. 💜
--patch-with-raw — synonym for -p --raw. Patch plus raw, together. 🔥
--indent-heuristic — enable the heuristic that shifts diff hunk boundaries to make patches easier to read. This is the default. Easier-to-read hunks? Obsessed. 🌸
--no-indent-heuristic — disable the indent heuristic. No shifting. None. Zero. 💀
--minimal — spend extra time to make sure the smallest possible diff is produced. Small diff, big effort. ⭐
--patience — generate a diff using the “patience diff” algorithm. Patience algorithm, iykyk. 🧚
--histogram — generate a diff using the “histogram diff” algorithm. Histogram algorithm has entered the chat. 💅
--anchored=<text> — generate a diff using the “anchored diff” algorithm. Anchored diff, very demure.

This option may be specified more than once. More than once, bestie.

If a line exists in both the source and destination, exists only once, and starts with <text>, this algorithm attempts to prevent it from appearing as a deletion or addition in the output. It uses the “patience diff” algorithm internally. That’s the exact behavior, no cap. 🫶

--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. Greedy and default, periodt. 💅
- minimal — spend extra time to make sure the smallest possible diff is produced. Smallest possible diff, maximum effort. ⭐
- patience — use “patience diff” algorithm when generating patches. Patience when patching. 🦋
- histogram — this algorithm extends the patience algorithm to “support low-occurrence common elements”. Low-occurrence common elements, exactly. 🔥

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. Important config countermove. 🚨

--stat[=<width>[,<name-width>[,<count>]]] — generate a diffstat. By default, as much space as necessary will be used for the filename part, and the rest for the graph part. Maximum width defaults to terminal width, or 80 columns if not connected to a terminal, and can be overridden by <width>. The width of the filename part can be limited by giving another width <name-width> after a comma or by setting diff.statNameWidth=<name-width>. The width of the graph part can be limited by using --stat-graph-width=<graph-width> or by setting diff.statGraphWidth=<graph-width>. Using --stat or --stat-graph-width affects all commands generating a stat graph, while setting diff.statNameWidth or diff.statGraphWidth does not affect git format-patch. By giving a third parameter <count>, you can limit the output to the first <count> lines, followed by ... if there are more. Diffstat customization is highkey a whole aesthetic. 🌸

These parameters can also be set individually with --stat-width=<width>, --stat-name-width=<name-width> and --stat-count=<count>. Individual knobs, very convenient. 🎀

--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. Condensed summary, iconic placement. ✨
--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. Machine-friendly numbers, no abbreviations. 🤖
--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. Just the final line, bestie. 💜
-X [<param>,...], --dirstat[=<param>,...] — output the distribution of relative amount of changes for each sub-directory. The behavior of --dirstat can be customized by passing it a comma separated list of parameters. The defaults are controlled by the diff.dirstat configuration variable (see git-config(1)). The following parameters are available: Dirstat parameters, let’s go. 🌈
- 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. Default behavior, periodt. 💅

okay so, picking up right inside --dirstat’s behavior menu, the values are:

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. lowkey pricey, highkey thorough 💸
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. slay for speed 🏎️
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. yes bestie, over 100% is allowed here 😭
<limit> — an integer parameter specifies a cut-off percent (3% by default). Directories contributing less than this percentage of the changes are not shown in the output.

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

--cumulative — synonym for --dirstat=cumulative.
--dirstat-by-file[=<param>,...] — synonym for --dirstat=files,<param>,....
--summary — output a condensed summary of extended header information such as creations, renames and mode changes. cute little recap energy 🎀
--patch-with-stat — synonym for -p --stat.
-z — when --raw, --numstat, --name-only or --name-status has been given, do not munge pathnames and use NULs as output field terminators.

Without this option, pathnames with "unusual" characters are quoted as explained for the configuration variable core.quotePath (see git-config(1)).

--name-only — show only the name of each changed file in the post-image tree. The file names are often encoded in UTF-8. For more information see the discussion about encoding in the git-log(1) manual page.
--name-status — show only the name(s) and status of each changed file. See the description of the --diff-filter option on what the status letters mean. Just like --name-only the file names are often encoded in UTF-8.
--submodule[=<format>] — specify how differences in submodules are shown. When specifying --submodule=short the short format is used. This format just shows the names of the commits at the beginning and end of the range. When --submodule or --submodule=log is specified, the log format is used. This format lists the commits in the range like git-submodule(1) summary does. When --submodule=diff is specified, the diff format is used. This format shows an inline diff of the changes in the submodule contents between the commit range. Defaults to diff.submodule or the short format if the config option is unset.
--color[=<when>] — show colored diff. --color (i.e. without =<when>) is the same as --color=always. <when> can be one of always, never, or auto. It can be changed by the color.ui and color.diff configuration settings. 🌈
--no-color — turn off colored diff. This can be used to override configuration settings. It is the same as --color=never.
--color-moved[=<mode>] — moved lines of code are colored differently. It can be changed by the diff.colorMoved configuration setting. The <mode> defaults to no if the option is not given and to zebra if the option with no mode is given. The mode must be one of:
- no — moved lines are not highlighted.
- default — is a synonym for zebra. This may change to a more sensible mode in the future.
- plain — any line that is added in one location and was removed in another location will be colored with color.diff.newMoved. Similarly color.diff.oldMoved will be used for removed lines that are added somewhere else in the diff. This mode picks up any moved line, but it is not very useful in a review to determine if a block of code was moved without permutation.
- blocks — blocks of moved text of at least 20 alphanumeric characters are detected greedily. The detected blocks are painted using either the color.diff.(old|new)Moved color. Adjacent blocks cannot be told apart.
- zebra — blocks of moved text are detected as in blocks mode. The blocks are painted using either the color.diff.(old|new)Moved color or color.diff.(old|new)MovedAlternative. The change between the two colors indicates that a new block was detected.
- dimmed-zebra — similar to zebra, but additional dimming of uninteresting parts of moved code is performed. The bordering lines of two adjacent blocks are considered interesting, the rest is uninteresting. dimmed_zebra is a deprecated synonym.
--no-color-moved — turn off move detection. This can be used to override configuration settings. It is the same as --color-moved=no.
--color-moved-ws=<mode>,... — this configures how whitespace is ignored when performing the move detection for --color-moved. It can be set by the diff.colorMovedWS configuration setting. These modes can be given as a comma separated list:
- no — do not ignore whitespace when performing move detection.
- ignore-space-at-eol — ignore changes in whitespace at EOL.
- ignore-space-change — ignore changes in amount of whitespace. This ignores whitespace at line end, and considers all other sequences of one or more whitespace characters to be equivalent.
- ignore-all-space — ignore whitespace when comparing lines. This ignores differences even if one line has whitespace where the other line has none.
- allow-indentation-change — initially ignore any whitespace in the move detection, then group the moved code blocks only into a block if the change in whitespace is the same per line. This is incompatible with the other modes. ⚠️ no mixing, bestie.
--no-color-moved-ws — do not ignore whitespace when performing move detection. This can be used to override configuration settings. It is the same as --color-moved-ws=no.
--word-diff[=<mode>] — by default, words are delimited by whitespace; see --word-diff-regex below. The <mode> defaults to plain, and must be one of:
- color — highlight changed words using only colors. Implies --color.
- plain — show words as [-removed-] and {added}. Makes no attempts to escape the delimiters if they appear in the input, so the output may be ambiguous.
- porcelain — use a special line-based format intended for script consumption. Added/removed/unchanged runs are printed in the usual unified diff format, starting with a +, -, or space 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.

The --word-diff option operates by taking the same line-by-line diff that is produced without the option and computing word-by-word changes within each hunk. This may produce a larger diff than a dedicated word-diff tool would. If Git acquires a different implementation in the future, the output may change. Note that this is similar to the --diff-algorithm option, which may also change the output.

--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. 😭 rude but true

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.
--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=<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 — okay so this is --full-index's louder sibling 💅 it spits out a binary diff that can actually be applied with git-apply, and it implies --patch. Combination meal, no extra charge.
--abbrev[=<n>] — instead of flexing the whole 40-byte hexadecimal object name in diff-raw format output and diff-tree header lines, you show the shortest prefix that's at least <n> hexdigits long and still uniquely refers to that object ✨. But in diff-patch output format, --full-index takes higher precedence — so if you said --full-index, full blob names show up no matter what --abbrev says. Want a non-default number of digits? --abbrev=<n>, easy.
-B[<n>][/<m>], --break-rewrites[=[<n>][/<m>]] — this one breaks complete rewrite changes into pairs of delete and create 🎀 and it's serving two purposes:
- It affects the way a change that amounts to a total rewrite of a file is presented — 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. The number <m> controls this aspect of the -B option and defaults to 60%. -B/70% means 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 and defaults to 50%. -B20% means 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, bestie 👑. If <n> is specified, it's 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, the -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, fr. 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, ... — T changed (T), are Unmerged (U), are UnknowX (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. Don't come for me, that's just how it is.

-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's 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. Detective mode, honestly 🔍.

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 the diff.relative config option and previous --relative.
-a, --text — treat all files as text 📝.
--ignore-cr-at-eol — ignore carriage-return at the end of line when doing a comparison.
--ignore-space-at-eol — ignore changes in whitespace at EOL.
-b, --ignore-space-change — ignore changes in amount of whitespace. This ignores whitespace at line end, and considers all other sequences of one or more whitespace characters to be equivalent 🌸.
-w, --ignore-all-space — ignore whitespace when comparing lines. This ignores differences even if one line has whitespace where the other line has none 😌.
--ignore-blank-lines — ignore changes whose lines are all blank.
-I<regex>, --ignore-matching-lines=<regex> — ignore changes whose all lines match <regex> 🦋. This option may be specified more than once.
--inter-hunk-context=<number> — show the context between diff hunks, up to the specified <number> of lines, thereby fusing hunks that are close to each other 🔗. Defaults to diff.interHunkContext or 0 if the config option is unset.
-W, --function-context — bestie, this one shows the whole function as context lines for each change, not just the sad little three lines around it. The function names get figured out the exact same way git diff works out patch hunk headers (peep "Defining a custom hunk-header" in gitattributes(5)). Chef's kiss for reviewing.
--exit-code — makes the program exit with codes similar to diff(1). Translating: it exits with 1 if there were differences, and 0 means no differences. Perfect for scripting, lowkey iconic.
--quiet — disables all output of the program. Implies --exit-code. Also disables execution of external diff helpers whose exit code is not trusted, i.e. their respective configuration option diff.trustExitCode or diff.<driver>.trustExitCode or environment variable GIT_EXTERNAL_DIFF_TRUST_EXIT_CODE is false. Silent treatment, but make it productive ✨
--ext-diff — allows 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. Like, it's not optional-optional, it's required-optional 💅
--no-ext-diff — disallows external diff drivers. Bye 👋
--textconv, --no-textconv — allow (or disallow) external text conversion filters to be run when comparing binary files. See gitattributes(5) for details. Here's the tea though: because textconv filters are typically a one-way conversion, the resulting diff is great for human eyeballs 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. Read-only vibes, no cap.
--ignore-submodules[=(none|untracked|dirty|all)] — ignores changes to submodules in the diff generation. all is the default. Let's break it down, bestie:
- 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 it can be used to override any settings of the ignore option in git-config(1) or gitmodules(5).
- untracked means submodules are not considered dirty when they only contain untracked content (but they are still scanned for modified content).
- 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).
- all hides all changes to submodules. Poof, gone.
--src-prefix=<prefix> — shows the given source <prefix> instead of a/. Customize your little label, slay.
--dst-prefix=<prefix> — shows the given destination <prefix> instead of b/. Matchy matchy 🎀
--no-prefix — do not show any source or destination prefix. Raw. Unfiltered. Feral, even.
--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)). The main character asserting dominance over your config.
--line-prefix=<prefix> — prepends an additional <prefix> to every line of output. Every. Single. Line. 🫶
--ita-invisible-in-index — okay so 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.

Heads up bestie: both options are experimental and could be removed in future. Handle with care 🙈

--max-depth=<depth> — for each pathspec given on command line, descend at most <depth> 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, here's the matches each set of options generates:
- --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.

Also important: this option is only supported for diffs between tree objects, not against the index or working tree. Don't come for it 💀

For more detailed explanation on these common options, see also gitdiffcore(7).

-1, --base, -2, --ours, -3, --theirs — compare the working tree with:
- the "base" version (stage #1) when using -1 or --base,
- "our branch" (stage #2) when using -2 or --ours, or
- "their branch" (stage #3) when using -3 or --theirs.

The index contains these stages only for unmerged entries, i.e. while resolving conflicts. See git-read-tree(1) section "3-Way Merge" for detailed information. Conflict-resolution era, we've all been there 😭

-0 — omits diff output for unmerged entries and just shows Unmerged. Can be used only when comparing the working tree with the index. Minimalist queen.
<path>... — the <path> parameters, when given, are used to limit the diff to the named paths (you can give directory names and get diff for all files under them). Scope it down, bestie 🎯

🔍 RAW OUTPUT FORMAT 🔍

The raw output format from git-diff-index, git-diff-tree, git-diff-files and git diff --raw are very similar. Cousins, basically. They all compare two sets of things — the difference is what gets compared:

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.

All the commands print one output line per changed file, except git diff-files in the case of an unmerged file, which prints both an "unmerged" and an "in-place edit" line. Overachiever 💅

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 if "src" is from the index and is unmerged.
a space.
mode for "dst"; 000000 if deletion, or if "dst" is from the index and is unmerged.
a space.
sha1 for "src"; 0{40} if creation, or if "src" is from the index and is unmerged.
a space.
sha1 for "dst"; 0{40} if deletion, if "dst" is from the index and is unmerged, or if "dst" is from the work tree and is out of sync with the index.
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.

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. Math girlies rise 🧮

The sha1 for "dst" is shown as all 0's if a file on the filesystem is out of sync with the index. Awkward, but honest.

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. No filter, no censoring ✨

🌈 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:

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
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. Show me the receipts 📜

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. It's giving "we all agreed on this one" energy 💀

🌸 GENERATING PATCH TEXT WITH `-P` 🌸

okay so bestie, when you run 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, it literally produces patch text. periodt. and you can customize how that patch text gets made via the GIT_EXTERNAL_DIFF and GIT_DIFF_OPTS environment variables (peep git(1) for those), plus the diff attribute (see gitattributes(5) — she's got lore, ok).

but here's the tea ☕: what -p gives you is slightly different from the traditional diff format. like, it's the traditional format's cousin who went to art school. here's the breakdown:

it's 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. and especially — listen up — even for a creation or a deletion, /dev/null is not used in place of the a/ or b/ filenames. nope, not here. 🙅‍♀️

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. iykyk.

it's followed by one or more extended header lines:

old mode <mode>
new mode <mode>
deleted file mode <mode>
new file mode <mode>
copy from <path>
copy to <path>
rename from <path>
rename to <path>
similarity index <number>
dissimilarity index <number>
index <hash>..<hash> <mode>

file modes <mode> are printed as 6-digit octal numbers including the file type and file permission bits. fancy, but make it octal. 💅

path names in extended headers do not include the a/ and b/ prefixes — those are a header-only kind of deal.

the similarity index is the percentage of unchanged lines, and the dissimilarity index is the percentage of changed lines. it's a rounded down integer, followed by a percent sign. so the similarity index value of 100% is reserved for two equal files, while 100% dissimilarity means that no line from the old file made it into the new one. brutal but honest 😭

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.

pathnames with "unusual" characters are quoted as explained for the configuration variable core.quotePath (see git-config(1)). the scare quotes around "unusual" are doing a lot of work there ngl.
okay this one matters so pay attention: 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. like, do not do that, it's not that kind of patch. 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

see how that works? it's giving "sneaky" and i'm obsessed. 🦋

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. yes you can make it speak your language bestie, go off.

🎀 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). also note that you can give a suitable --diff-merges option to any of these commands to force generation of diffs in a specific format — options, options, options, we stay winning. ✨

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);

and here's how it's structured:

it's 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

it's 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. so don't go looking for them there, they're not coming to the party. 🙈

it's 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. multi-parent, multi-lore. 👑

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. big "display only, do not touch" energy. 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. count 'em, bestie. 🔥

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 +). see, it all makes sense once someone explains it to you 💖

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"). our version vs their version, the eternal struggle, no cap.

🌈 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 👀 (yes, that means you, you're the human, congratulations).

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 +--

cute!! compact!! efficient!! we love a compressed pathname. 🎀

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:

the number of added lines;
a tab;
the number of deleted lines;
a tab;
pathname (possibly with rename/copy information);
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:

the number of added lines;
a tab;
the number of deleted lines;
a tab;
a NUL (only exists if renamed/copied);
pathname in preimage;
a NUL (only exists if renamed/copied);
pathname in postimage (only exists if renamed/copied);
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. scripting girlies stay winning 🫶

💖 EXAMPLES 💖

Okay bestie, this is the fun part — real-life receipts of how you actually use this thing 🫶

✨ Various ways to check your working tree ✨

$ git diff            (1)
$ git diff --cached   (2)
$ git diff HEAD       (3)
$ git diff AUTO_MERGE (4)

Changes in the working tree not yet staged for the next commit.
Changes between the index and your last commit; what you would be committing if you run git commit without -a option.
Changes in the working tree since your last commit; what you would be committing if you run git commit -a
Changes in the working tree you've made to resolve textual conflicts so far.

🌸 Comparing with arbitrary commits 🌸

$ git diff test            (1)
$ git diff HEAD -- ./test  (2)
$ git diff HEAD^ HEAD      (3)

Instead of using the tip of the current branch, compare with the tip of "test" branch.
Instead of comparing with the tip of "test" branch, compare with the tip of the current branch, but limit the comparison to the file "test".
Compare the version before the last commit and the last commit.

🦋 Comparing branches 🦋

$ git diff topic master    (1)
$ git diff topic..master   (2)
$ git diff topic...master  (3)

Changes between the tips of the topic and the master branches.
Same as above.
Changes that occurred on the master branch since when the topic branch was started off it.

Ngl the two-dot vs three-dot thing trips everyone up at first — but look at you, reading the manpage like a main character 👑

🎀 Limiting the diff output 🎀

$ git diff --diff-filter=MRC            (1)
$ git diff --name-status                (2)
$ git diff arch/i386 include/asm-i386   (3)

Show only modification, rename, and copy, but not addition or deletion.
Show only names and the nature of change, but not actual diff output.
Limit diff output to named subtrees.

💅 Munging the diff output 💅

$ git diff --find-copies-harder -B -C  (1)
$ git diff -R                          (2)

Spend extra cycles to find renames, copies and complete rewrites (very expensive).
Output diff in reverse.

🌈 CONFIGURATION 🌈

So here's the tea: everything below this line in this section is selectively included from the git-config(1) documentation. The content is the same as what's found there:

diff.autoRefreshIndex — When using git diff to compare with work tree files, do not consider stat-only changes as changed. Instead, silently run git update-index --refresh to update the cached stat information for paths whose contents in the work tree match the contents in the index. This option defaults to true. Note that this affects only git diff Porcelain, and not lower level diff commands such as git diff-files.
diff.dirstat — A comma separated list of --dirstat parameters specifying the default behavior of the --dirstat option to git diff and friends. The defaults can be overridden on the command line (using --dirstat=<param>,...). The fallback defaults (when not changed by diff.dirstat) are changes,noncumulative,3. The following parameters are available:
- changes — Compute the dirstat numbers by counting the lines that have been removed from the source, or added to the destination. This ignores the amount of pure code movements within a file. In other words, rearranging lines in a file is not counted as much as other changes. This is the default behavior when no parameter is given.
- lines — Compute the dirstat numbers by doing the regular line-based diff analysis, and summing the removed/added line counts. (For binary files, count 64-byte chunks instead, since binary files have no natural concept of lines). This is a more expensive --dirstat behavior than the changes behavior, but it does count rearranged lines within a file as much as other changes. The resulting output is consistent with what you get from the other --*stat options.
- files — Compute the dirstat numbers by counting the number of files changed. Each changed file counts equally in the dirstat analysis. This is the computationally cheapest --dirstat behavior, since it does not have to look at the file contents at all.
- cumulative — Count changes in a child directory for the parent directory as well. Note that when using cumulative, the sum of the percentages reported may exceed 100%. The default (non-cumulative) behavior can be specified with the noncumulative parameter.
- <limit> — An integer parameter specifies a cut-off percent (3% by default). Directories contributing less than this percentage of the changes are not shown in the output.

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

diff.statNameWidth — Limit the width of the filename part in --stat output. If set, applies to all commands generating --stat output except format-patch.
diff.statGraphWidth — Limit the width of the graph part in --stat output. If set, applies to all commands generating --stat output except format-patch.
diff.context — Generate diffs with <n> lines of context instead of the default of 3. This value is overridden by the -U option.
diff.interHunkContext — Show the context between diff hunks, up to the specified number of lines, thereby fusing the hunks that are close to each other. This value serves as the default for the --inter-hunk-context command line option.
diff.external — If this config variable is set, diff generation is not performed using the internal diff machinery, but using the given command. Can be overridden with the GIT_EXTERNAL_DIFF environment variable. The command is called with parameters as described under "git Diffs" in git(1). Note: if you want to use an external diff program only on a subset of your files, you might want to use gitattributes(5) instead.
diff.trustExitCode — If this boolean value is set to true then the diff.external command is expected to return exit code 0 if it considers the input files to be equal or 1 if it considers them to be different, like diff(1). If it is set to false, which is the default, then the command is expected to return exit code 0 regardless of equality. Any other exit code causes Git to report a fatal error. 💀
diff.ignoreSubmodules — Sets the default value of --ignore-submodules. Note that this affects only git diff Porcelain, and not lower level diff commands such as git diff-files. git checkout and git switch also honor this setting when reporting uncommitted changes. Setting it to all disables the submodule summary normally shown by git commit and git status when status.submoduleSummary is set unless it is overridden by using the --ignore-submodules command-line option. The git submodule commands are not affected by this setting. By default this is set to untracked so that any untracked submodules are ignored.
diff.mnemonicPrefix — If set, git diff uses a prefix pair that is different from the standard a/ and b/ depending on what is being compared. When this configuration is in effect, reverse diff output also swaps the order of the prefixes:
- git diff — compares the (i)ndex and the (w)ork tree;
- git diff HEAD — compares a (c)ommit and the (w)ork tree;
- git diff --cached — compares a (c)ommit and the (i)ndex;
- git diff HEAD:<file1> <file2> — compares an (o)bject and a (w)ork tree entity;
- git diff --no-index <a> <b> — compares two non-git things <a> and <b>.
diff.noPrefix — If set, git diff does not show any source or destination prefix.
diff.srcPrefix — If set, git diff uses this source prefix. Defaults to a/.
diff.dstPrefix — If set, git diff uses this destination prefix. Defaults to b/.
diff.relative — If set to true, git diff does not show changes outside of the directory and show pathnames relative to the current directory.
diff.orderFile — File indicating how to order files within a diff. See the -O option for details. If diff.orderFile is a relative pathname, it is treated as relative to the top of the working tree.
diff.renameLimit — The number of files to consider in the exhaustive portion of copy/rename detection; equivalent to the git diff option -l. If not set, the default value is currently 1000. This setting has no effect if rename detection is turned off.
diff.renames — Whether and how Git detects renames. If set to false, rename detection is disabled. If set to true, basic rename detection is enabled. If set to copies or copy, Git will detect copies, as well. Defaults to true. Note that this affects only git diff Porcelain like git-diff(1) and git-log(1), and not lower level commands such as git-diff-files(1).
diff.suppressBlankEmpty — A boolean to inhibit the standard behavior of printing a space before each empty output line. Defaults to false.
diff.submodule — Specify the format in which differences in submodules are shown. The short format just shows the names of the commits at the beginning and end of the range. The log format lists the commits in the range like git-submodule(1) summary does. The diff format shows an inline diff of the changed contents of the submodule. Defaults to short.
diff.wordRegex — A POSIX Extended Regular Expression used to determine what is a "word" when performing word-by-word difference calculations. Character sequences that match the regular expression are "words", all other characters are ignorable whitespace.
diff.<driver>.command — The custom diff driver command. See gitattributes(5) for details.
diff.<driver>.trustExitCode — If this boolean value is set to true then the diff.<driver>.command command is expected to return exit code 0 if it considers the input files to be equal or 1 if it considers them to be different, like diff(1). If it is set to false, which is the default, then the command is expected to return exit code 0 regardless of equality. Any other exit code causes Git to report a fatal error. 🫶
diff.<driver>.xfuncname — the regex your diff driver uses to spot the hunk header 🎯 you can also point it at a built-in pattern instead of writing your own. deets in gitattributes(5).
diff.<driver>.binary — set this to true and the driver treats those files as binary, periodt. gitattributes(5) has the full story.
diff.<driver>.textconv — the command the driver calls to generate the text-converted version of a file 💅 that converted result is what gets used to make a human-readable diff. gitattributes(5) for the details.
diff.<driver>.wordRegex — the regex the driver uses to split words within a line ✂️ see gitattributes(5).
diff.<driver>.cachetextconv — set to true and the driver caches its text conversion outputs 🎀 gitattributes(5), always gitattributes(5).
diff.indentHeuristic — set this to false to switch off the default heuristics that shift diff hunk boundaries around to make patches easier to read. (yes, the default is on. it's helping. let it help 🫶)
diff.algorithm — picks your diff algorithm, bestie. the variants:

💫 the algorithm variants 💫

default, myers — the basic greedy diff algorithm. currently this is the default, so if you never touch this setting, this is your girl.
minimal — spends extra time making sure the smallest possible diff gets produced. slow and thorough, she takes her time 💅
patience — uses the "patience diff" algorithm when generating patches.
histogram — this algorithm extends the patience algorithm to "support low-occurrence common elements".
diff.wsErrorHighlight — highlights whitespace errors in the context, old or new lines of the diff ✨ multiple values get separated by commas, none resets previous values, default resets the list to new, and all is a shorthand for old,new,context. the whitespace errors get colored with color.diff.whitespace. and the command line option --ws-error-highlight=<kind> overrides this setting, no cap.
diff.colorMoved — if you set it to a valid <mode> or a true value, moved lines in a diff get colored differently 🌈 for the valid modes, peep --color-moved. set it to plain true and the default color mode kicks in. set it to false and moved lines stay uncolored.
diff.colorMovedWS — when moved lines are being colored (via diff.colorMoved and friends, iykyk), this option controls the mode for how spaces get treated. for the valid modes see --color-moved-ws in git-diff(1).

go read them, they're all iconic in their own way 💖

👑 GIT 👑

Part of the git(1) suite — one big happy family fr fr.

and that's the whole page, bestie, you made it to the end 🎉 this was Git 2.56.0, dated 2026-09-27 — go forth and diff slay 💅✨

📦 where this page comes from

arch rolling: git 2.56.0-1 · GPL-2.0-only
💖 girlified by deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash-1017 on 2026-11-06: a language model's rewrite of the original, under its terms