GIT-SHOW(1)

📦
version 2.56.0 · 27 versions
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💅 GIT-SHOW(1) 💅

okay bestie, this is GIT-SHOW(1) from the Git Manual — the page that shows various types of objects. no cap, we’re keeping every detail. 💖

✨ NAME ✨

git-show — show various types of objects.

🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

git show [<options>] [<object>...]

🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

Shows one or more objects (blobs, trees, tags and commits). Literally all the object vibes.

  • For commits it shows the log message and textual diff. It also presents the merge commit in a special format as produced by git diff-tree --cc.
  • For tags, it shows the tag message and the referenced objects.
  • For trees, it shows the names (equivalent to git ls-tree with --name-only).
  • For plain blobs, it shows the plain contents.

Some options that git log command understands can be used to control how the changes the commit introduces are shown.

This manual page describes only the most frequently used options. periodt.

💅 OPTIONS 💅

  • <object>... — the names of objects to show (defaults to HEAD). For a more complete list of ways to spell object names, see the "SPECIFYING REVISIONS" section in gitrevisions(7).
  • --pretty[=<format>], --format=<format> — pretty-print the contents of the commit logs in a given format, where <format> can be one of oneline, short, medium, full, fuller, reference, email, raw, format:<string> and tformat:<string>. When <format> is none of the above, and has %<placeholder> in it, it acts as if --pretty=tformat:<format> were given.

See the "PRETTY FORMATS" section for some additional details for each format. When =<format> part is omitted, it defaults to medium.

Note — you can specify the default pretty format in the repository configuration (see git-config(1)).
  • --abbrev-commit — instead of showing the full 40-byte hexadecimal commit object name, show a prefix that names the object uniquely. --abbrev=<n> (which also modifies diff output, if it is displayed) option can be used to specify the minimum length of the prefix.

This should make --pretty=oneline a whole lot more readable for people using 80-column terminals.

  • --no-abbrev-commit — show the full 40-byte hexadecimal commit object name. This negates --abbrev-commit, either explicit or implied by other options such as --oneline. It also overrides the log.abbrevCommit variable.
  • --oneline — this is a shorthand for --pretty=oneline --abbrev-commit used together.
  • --encoding=<encoding> — commit objects record the character encoding used for the log message in their encoding header; this option can be used to tell the command to re-code the commit log message in the encoding preferred by the user. For non plumbing commands this defaults to UTF-8. Note that if an object claims to be encoded in X and we are outputting in X, we will output the object verbatim; this means that invalid sequences in the original commit may be copied to the output. Likewise, if iconv(3) fails to convert the commit, we will quietly output the original object verbatim.
  • --expand-tabs=<n>, --expand-tabs, --no-expand-tabs — perform a tab expansion (replace each tab with enough spaces to fill to the next display column that is a multiple of <n>) in the log message before showing it in the output. --expand-tabs is a short-hand for --expand-tabs=8, and --no-expand-tabs is a short-hand for --expand-tabs=0, which disables tab expansion.

By default, tabs are expanded in pretty formats that indent the log message by 4 spaces (i.e. medium, which is the default, full, and fuller).

  • --notes[=<ref>] — show the notes (see git-notes(1)) that annotate the commit, when showing the commit log message. This is the default for git log, git show and git whatchanged commands when there is no --pretty, --format, or --oneline option given on the command line.

By default, the notes shown are from the notes refs listed in the core.notesRef and notes.displayRef variables (or corresponding environment overrides). See git-config(1) for more details.

With an optional <ref> argument, use the ref to find the notes to display. The ref can specify the full refname when it begins with refs/notes/; when it begins with notes/, refs/ and otherwise refs/notes/ is prefixed to form the full name of the ref.

Multiple --notes options can be combined to control which notes are being displayed. Examples: "--notes=foo" will show only notes from refs/notes/foo; "--notes=foo --notes" will show both notes from "refs/notes/foo" and from the default notes ref(s).

  • --no-notes — do not show notes. This negates the above --notes option, by resetting the list of notes refs from which notes are shown. Options are parsed in the order given on the command line, so e.g. "--notes --notes=foo --no-notes --notes=bar" will only show notes from refs/notes/bar.
  • --show-notes-by-default — show the default notes unless options for displaying specific notes are given.
  • --show-notes[=<ref>], --standard-notes, --no-standard-notes — these options are deprecated. Use the above --notes/--no-notes options instead.
  • --show-signature — check the validity of a signed commit object by passing the signature to gpg --verify and show the output.

🔥 PRETTY FORMATS 🔥

If the commit is a merge, and if the pretty-format is not oneline, email or raw, an additional line is inserted before the Author: line. This line begins with "Merge: " and the hashes of ancestral commits are printed, separated by spaces. Note that the listed commits may not necessarily be the list of the direct parent commits if you have limited your view of history: for example, if you are only interested in changes related to a certain directory or file.

There are several built-in formats, and you can define additional formats by setting a pretty.<name> config option to either another format name, or a format: string, as described below (see git-config(1)). Here are the details of the built-in formats:

🍓 oneline 🍓

<hash> <title-line>

This is designed to be as compact as possible.

🌈 short 🌈

commit <hash>
Author: <author>

    <title-line>

🎀 medium 🎀

commit <hash>
Author: <author>
Date:   <author-date>

    <title-line>

    <full-commit-message>

💜 full 💜

commit <hash>
Author: <author>
Commit: <committer>

    <title-line>

    <full-commit-message>

🦋 fuller 🦋

commit <hash>
Author:     <author>
AuthorDate: <author-date>
Commit:     <committer>
CommitDate: <committer-date>

     <title-line>

     <full-commit-message>

⭐ reference ⭐

<abbrev-hash> (<title-line>, <short-author-date>)

This format is used to refer to another commit in a commit message and is the same as --pretty='format:%C(auto)%h (%s, %ad)'. By default, the date is formatted with --date=short unless another --date option is explicitly specified. As with any format: with format placeholders, its output is not affected by other options like --decorate and --walk-reflogs.

💌 email 💌

From <hash> <date>
From: <author>
Date: <author-date>
Subject: [PATCH] <title-line>

<full-commit-message>

📬 mboxrd 📬

Like email, but lines in the commit message starting with "From " (preceded by zero or more ">") are quoted with ">" so they aren’t confused as starting a new commit.

🧾 raw 🧾

The raw format shows the entire commit exactly as stored in the commit object. Notably, the hashes are displayed in full, regardless of whether --abbrev or --no-abbrev are used, and parents information show the true parent commits, without taking grafts or history simplification into account. Note that this format affects the way commits are displayed, but not the way the diff is shown e.g. with git log --raw. To get full object names in a raw diff format, use --no-abbrev.

🧚 format:<format-string> 🧚

The format:<format-string> format allows you to specify which information you want to show. It works a little bit like printf format, with the notable exception that you get a newline with %n instead of \n.

E.g, format:"The author of %h was %an, %ar%nThe title was >>%s<<%n" would show something like this:

The author of fe6e0ee was Junio C Hamano, 23 hours ago
The title was >>t4119: test autocomputing -p<n> for traditional diff input.<<

The placeholders are:

  • Placeholders that expand to a single literal character:
    • %n — newline
    • %% — a raw %
    • %x00 — %x followed by two hexadecimal digits is replaced with a byte with the hexadecimal digits' value (we will call this "literal formatting code" in the rest of this document).
  • Placeholders that affect formatting of later placeholders:
    • %Cred — switch color to red
    • %Cgreen — switch color to green
    • %Cblue — switch color to blue
    • %Creset — reset color
    • %C(<spec>) — color specification, as described under Values in the "CONFIGURATION FILE" section of git-config(1). By default, colors are shown only when enabled for log output (by color.diff, color.ui, or --color, and respecting the auto settings of the former if we are going to a terminal). %C(auto,<spec>) is accepted as a historical synonym for the default (e.g., %C(auto,red)). Specifying %C(always,<spec>) will show the colors even when color is not otherwise enabled (though consider just using --color=always to enable color for the whole output, including this format and anything else git might color). auto alone (i.e. %C(auto)) will turn on auto coloring on the next placeholders until the color is switched again.
    • %m — left (<), right (>) or boundary (-) mark
    • %w([<w>[,<i1>[,<i2>]]]) — switch line wrapping, like the -w option of git-shortlog(1).
  • %<(<n>[,(trunc|ltrunc|mtrunc)]) — okay so this one makes the next placeholder take up at least <n> column widths, padding spaces on the right if it needs to. Optionally you can truncate with an ellipsis .. — at the left (ltrunc, so ..ft), the middle (mtrunc, so mi..le), or the end (trunc, so rig..) — if the output is longer than <n> columns. Notes, bestie, take them:
    • Note 1: truncating only works correctly with <n> >= 2.
    • Note 2: spaces around the <n> and <m> (see below) values are optional.
    • Note 3: emojis and other wide characters take two display columns, which may over-run column boundaries 😭 (yes, even cute ones).
    • Note 4: decomposed character combining marks may be misplaced at padding boundaries.
  • %<|(<m>) — makes the next placeholder take at least until the <m>th display column, padding spaces on the right if necessary. Use negative <m> values for column positions measured from the right hand edge of the terminal window. ✨
  • %>(<n>), %>|(<m>) — similar to %<(<n>) and %<|(<m>) respectively, except it pads spaces on the left.
  • %>>(<n>), %>>|(<m>) — similar to %>(<n>) and %>|(<m>) respectively, except that if the next placeholder takes more spaces than given and there are spaces on its left, it uses those spaces.
  • %><(<n>), %><|(<m>) — similar to %<(<n>) and %<|(<m>) respectively, but padding both sides, i.e. the text is centered. main character energy, centered 💅
  • Placeholders that expand to information extracted from the commit 👑:
  • %H — commit hash
  • %h — abbreviated commit hash
  • %T — tree hash
  • %t — abbreviated tree hash
  • %P — parent hashes
  • %p — abbreviated parent hashes
  • %an — author name
  • %aN — author name (respecting .mailmap, see git-shortlog(1) or git-blame(1))
  • %ae — author email
  • %aE — author email (respecting .mailmap, see git-shortlog(1) or git-blame(1))
  • %al — author email local-part (the part before the @ sign)
  • %aL — author local-part (see %al) respecting .mailmap, see git-shortlog(1) or git-blame(1))
  • %ad — author date (format respects --date= option)
  • %aD — author date, RFC2822 style
  • %ar — author date, relative
  • %at — author date, UNIX timestamp
  • %ai — author date, ISO 8601-like format
  • %aI — author date, strict ISO 8601 format
  • %as — author date, short format (YYYY-MM-DD)
  • %ah — author date, human style (like the --date=human option of git-rev-list(1))
  • %cn — committer name
  • %cN — committer name (respecting .mailmap, see git-shortlog(1) or git-blame(1))
  • %ce — committer email
  • %cE — committer email (respecting .mailmap, see git-shortlog(1) or git-blame(1))
  • %cl — committer email local-part (the part before the @ sign)
  • %cL — committer local-part (see %cl) respecting .mailmap, see git-shortlog(1) or git-blame(1))
  • %cd — committer date (format respects --date= option)
  • %cD — committer date, RFC2822 style
  • %cr — committer date, relative
  • %ct — committer date, UNIX timestamp
  • %ci — committer date, ISO 8601-like format
  • %cI — committer date, strict ISO 8601 format
  • %cs — committer date, short format (YYYY-MM-DD)
  • %ch — committer date, human style (like the --date=human option of git-rev-list(1))
  • %d — ref names, like the --decorate option of git-log(1)
  • %D — ref names without the " (", ")" wrapping.
  • %(count) — the number of a patch within a patch series. Used only in --commit-list-format in format-patch
  • %(total) — the total number of patches in a patch series. Used only in --commit-list-format in format-patch
  • %(decorate[:<option>,...]) — ref names with custom decorations 🎀. The decorate string may be followed by a colon and zero or more comma-separated options. Option values may contain literal formatting codes — and those must be used for commas (%x2C) and closing parentheses (%x29), because of their role in the option syntax. Fr fr, don't skip that part. The options:
    • prefix=<value> — shown before the list of ref names. Defaults to " (".
    • suffix=<value> — shown after the list of ref names. Defaults to ")".
    • separator=<value> — shown between ref names. Defaults to ", ".
    • pointer=<value> — shown between HEAD and the branch it points to, if any. Defaults to " → ".
    • tag=<value> — shown before tag names. Defaults to "tag: ".

For example, to produce decorations with no wrapping or tag annotations, and spaces as separators:

%(decorate:prefix=,suffix=,tag=,separator= )
  • %(describe[:<option>,...]) — human-readable name, like git-describe(1); empty string for undescribable commits. The describe string may be followed by a colon and zero or more comma-separated options. Heads up 🫶: descriptions can be inconsistent when tags are added or removed at the same time. The options:
    • tags[=<bool-value>] — instead of only considering annotated tags, consider lightweight tags as well.
    • abbrev=<number> — instead of using the default number of hexadecimal digits (which will vary according to the number of objects in the repository, with a default of 7) of the abbreviated object name, use <number> digits, or as many digits as needed to form a unique object name.
    • match=<pattern> — only consider tags matching the given glob(7) <pattern>, excluding the refs/tags/ prefix.
    • exclude=<pattern> — do not consider tags matching the given glob(7) <pattern>, excluding the refs/tags/ prefix.
  • %S — ref name given on the command line by which the commit was reached (like git log --source), only works with git log
  • %e — encoding
  • %s — subject
  • %f — sanitized subject line, suitable for a filename
  • %b — body
  • %B — raw body (unwrapped subject and body)
  • %N — commit notes
  • %GG — raw verification message from GPG for a signed commit
  • %G? — show "G" for a good (valid) signature, "B" for a bad signature, "U" for a good signature with unknown validity, "X" for a good signature that has expired, "Y" for a good signature made by an expired key, "R" for a good signature made by a revoked key, "E" if the signature cannot be checked (e.g. missing key) and "N" for no signature. That's the whole alphabet of signature moods 😭
  • %GS — show the name of the signer for a signed commit
  • %GK — show the key used to sign a signed commit
  • %GF — show the fingerprint of the key used to sign a signed commit
  • %GP — show the fingerprint of the primary key whose subkey was used to sign a signed commit
  • %GT — show the trust level for the key used to sign a signed commit
  • %gD — reflog selector, e.g. refs/stash@{1} or refs/stash@{2 minutes ago}; the format follows the rules described for the -g option. The portion before the @ is the refname as given on the command line (so git log -g refs/heads/master would yield refs/heads/master@{0}).
  • %gd — shortened reflog selector; same as %gD, but the refname portion is shortened for human readability (so refs/heads/master becomes just master). Iconic, honestly ✨
  • %gn — reflog identity name
  • %gN — reflog identity name (respecting .mailmap, see git-shortlog(1) or git-blame(1))
  • %ge — reflog identity email
  • %gE — reflog identity email (respecting .mailmap, see git-shortlog(1) or git-blame(1))
  • %gs — reflog subject
  • %(trailers[:<option>,...]) — display the trailers of the body as interpreted by git-interpret-trailers(1). The trailers string may be followed by a colon and zero or more comma-separated options. If any option is provided multiple times, the last occurrence wins. The options:
    • key=<key> — only show trailers with the specified <key>. Matching is done case-insensitively and the trailing colon is optional. If the option is given multiple times, trailer lines matching any of the keys are shown. This option automatically enables the only option so that non-trailer lines in the trailer block are hidden. If that is not desired it can be disabled with only=false. E.g., %(trailers:key=Reviewed-by) shows trailer lines with key Reviewed-by.
    • only[=<bool>] — select whether non-trailer lines from the trailer block should be included.
  • separator=<sep> — sets the separator that gets dropped between trailer lines. Defaults to a line feed character. The <sep> string can hold the literal formatting codes described above. Wanna use a comma as your separator? You have to write it as %x2C, otherwise it gets parsed as the next option and everything goes sideways 🙈. Like, %(trailers:key=Ticket,separator=%x2C ) shows every trailer line whose key is Ticket, separated by a comma and a space. Periodt.
  • unfold[=<bool>] — makes it act like interpret-trailer's --unfold option was passed. So %(trailers:only,unfold=true) unfolds and shows all the trailer lines. Cute.
  • keyonly[=<bool>] — only shows the key part of the trailer. That's it, that's the whole vibe.
  • valueonly[=<bool>] — only shows the value part of the trailer. The other half of the duo 💅
  • key_value_separator=<sep> — sets the separator inserted between the key and the value of each trailer. Defaults to ": ". Otherwise it shares the exact same semantics as separator=<sep> up above.

📌 Note

Some placeholders lowkey depend on other options you handed to the revision traversal engine. Example: the %g* reflog options will insert an empty string unless we're traversing reflog entries (e.g., via git log -g). And the %d and %D placeholders will use the "short" decoration format if --decorate wasn't already given on the command line. iykyk.

Ok so the boolean options accept an optional value [=<bool-value>]. The values taken by --type=bool git-config(1), like yes and off, are all accepted. And giving a boolean option without =<value> is equivalent to giving it with =true. Slay, consistency.

If you add a + (plus sign) after the % of a placeholder, a line-feed gets inserted immediately before the expansion if and only if the placeholder expands to a non-empty string.

If you add a - (minus sign) after the % of a placeholder, all the consecutive line-feeds immediately preceding the expansion get deleted if and only if the placeholder expands to an empty string.

If you add a ' ' (space) after the % of a placeholder, a space gets inserted immediately before the expansion if and only if the placeholder expands to a non-empty string. Three little modifiers, three little vibes 🦋

🧚 tformat:

The tformat: format works exactly like format:, except it gives you "terminator" semantics instead of "separator" semantics. Translation bestie: each commit gets the message terminator character appended (usually a newline), rather than a separator being placed between entries. Which means the final entry of a single-line format is properly terminated with a new line, just like the "oneline" format does. No more sad unterminated last line 😭

For example:

$ git log -2 --pretty=format:%h 4da45bef \
  | perl -pe '$_ .= " -- NO NEWLINE\n" unless /\n/'
4da45be
7134973 -- NO NEWLINE

$ git log -2 --pretty=tformat:%h 4da45bef \
  | perl -pe '$_ .= " -- NO NEWLINE\n" unless /\n/'
4da45be
7134973

See the difference? The first one has that lonely -- NO NEWLINE hanging off the end because the last line genuinely had no newline. The tformat: one is clean. Iconic behaviour.

In addition, any unrecognized string that has a % in it gets interpreted as if it has tformat: in front of it. So these two are literally equivalent:

$ git log -2 --pretty=tformat:%h 4da45bef
$ git log -2 --pretty=%h 4da45bef

🔥 DIFF FORMATTING

The options below change the way git show generates diff output. Strap in 💖

  • -p, -u, --patch — generate patch (see the section called "GENERATING PATCH TEXT WITH -P").
  • -s, --no-patch — suppress all output from the diff machinery. Super useful for commands like git show that show the patch by default and you just wanna squelch their output, or to cancel out the effect of options like --patch, --stat that came earlier on the command line in an alias. The ol' uno-reverse ✨
  • -m — show diffs for merge commits in the default format. This is similar to --diff-merges=on, except -m will produce no output unless -p is given as well. Sneaky.
  • -c — produce combined diff output for merge commits. Shortcut for --diff-merges=combined -p.
  • --cc — produce dense combined diff output for merge commits. Shortcut for --diff-merges=dense-combined -p.
  • --dd — produce diff with respect to first parent for both merge and regular commits. Shortcut for --diff-merges=first-parent -p.
  • --remerge-diff — produce remerge-diff output for merge commits. Shortcut for --diff-merges=remerge -p.
  • --no-diff-merges — synonym for --diff-merges=off.
  • --diff-merges=<format> — specify the diff format to be used for merge commits. Default is dense-combined unless --first-parent is in use, in which case first-parent is the default.

The following formats are supported:

  • off, none — disable output of diffs for merge commits. Useful to override an implied value.
  • on, m — make diff output for merge commits be shown in the default format. The default format can be changed using the log.diffMerges configuration variable, whose default value is separate.
  • first-parent, 1 — show full diff with respect to first parent. This is the same format that --patch produces for non-merge commits.
  • separate — show full diff with respect to each of the parents. A separate log entry and diff is generated for each parent.
  • combined, c — show differences from each of the parents to the merge result simultaneously, instead of showing a pairwise diff between a parent and the result one at a time. Furthermore, it lists only files which were modified from all parents.
  • dense-combined, cc — further compress the output produced by --diff-merges=combined by omitting uninteresting hunks whose contents in the parents have only two variants and the merge result picks one of them without modification.
  • remerge, r — remerge two-parent merge commits to create a temporary tree object — potentially containing files with conflict markers and such. A diff is then shown between that temporary tree and the actual merge commit.
⚠️ The output emitted when this option is used is subject to change, and so is its interaction with other options (unless explicitly documented). So don't build your whole personality around it, bestie.
  • --combined-all-paths — cause combined diffs (used for merge commits) to list the name of the file from all parents. So it only has an effect when --diff-merges=[dense-]combined is in use, and it's likely only useful if filename changes are detected (i.e. when either rename or copy detection have been requested). Niche but valid 🎀
  • -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. (Fun fact: -U without <n> is silently accepted as a synonym for -p due to a historical accident 💀). Implies --patch.
  • --output=<file> — output to a specific file instead of stdout. Cute.
  • --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're +, - and ' ' respectively.
  • --raw — for each commit, show a summary of changes using the raw diff format. See the "RAW OUTPUT FORMAT" section of git-diff(1). Heads up: this is different from showing the log itself in raw format, which you get with --format=raw. Two separate things, don't mix 'em up 🙈
  • --patch-with-raw — synonym for -p --raw.
  • -t — show the tree objects in the diff output.
  • --indent-heuristic — enable the heuristic that shifts diff hunk boundaries to make patches easier to read. This is the default, so you're already living this life ✨
  • --no-indent-heuristic — disable the indent heuristic.
  • --minimal — spend extra time to make sure the smallest possible diff is produced. Slow and thorough, main character energy.
  • --patience — generate a diff using the "patience diff" algorithm.
  • --histogram — generate a diff using the "histogram diff" algorithm.
  • --anchored=<text> — generate a diff using the "anchored diff" algorithm.

This option may be specified more than once.

If a line exists in both the source and destination, exists only once, and starts with <text>, this algorithm attempts to prevent it from appearing as a deletion or addition in the output. It uses the "patience diff" algorithm internally.

  • --diff-algorithm=(patience|minimal|histogram|myers) — choose a diff algorithm. The variants are as follows:
    • default, myers — the basic greedy diff algorithm. Currently, this is the default.
    • minimal — spend extra time to make sure the smallest possible diff is produced.
    • patience — use "patience diff" algorithm when generating patches.
    • histogram — this algorithm extends the patience algorithm to "support low-occurrence common elements".

For instance, if you configured the diff.algorithm variable to a non-default value and want to use the default one, then you have to use the --diff-algorithm=default option. Ya can't just wish it back, bestie 💅

  • --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. And by giving a third parameter <count>, you can limit the output to the first <count> lines, followed by ... if there are more.

These parameters can also be set individually with --stat-width=<width>, --stat-name-width=<name-width> and --stat-count=<count>. So many knobs, so little time 🎀

  • --compact-summary — gives you a condensed lil summary of the extended header tea ☕ — stuff like file creations or deletions (shown as "new" or "gone", plus +l if it's a symlink) and mode changes (+x or -x for adding or removing the executable bit respectively) — all tucked into the diffstat. Where does it go? Right between the filename part and the graph part, bestie. Also, it implies --stat. 💅
  • --numstat — basically --stat's cousin, except it shows the number of added and deleted lines in decimal notation with the pathname without abbreviation, so it's way more machine-friendly. For binary files it outputs two - instead of saying 0 0. 🤖
  • --shortstat — only the last line of the --stat format, please and thank you: total number of modified files plus the number of added and deleted lines. Short and slay. ✨
  • -X [<param>,...], --dirstat[=<param>,...] — shows you the distribution of the relative amount of changes for each sub-directory. You can customize how --dirstat behaves by passing a comma separated list of parameters. The defaults are controlled by the diff.dirstat configuration variable (peep git-config(1)). Here's the menu of parameters:
    • changes — computes dirstat numbers by counting the lines 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 inside a file is not counted as much as other changes. This is the default behavior when no parameter is given. 👑
    • lines — computes 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 — computes 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 doesn't have to look at the file contents at all. 🍃
    • cumulative — counts changes in a child directory for the parent directory as well. Heads up though: 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 that 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 — a synonym for --dirstat=cumulative. Same vibe, shorter to type. 🫶
  • --dirstat-by-file[=<param>,...] — a synonym for --dirstat=files,<param>,.... 💖
  • --summary — outputs a condensed summary of extended header information such as creations, renames and mode changes. The receipts, basically. 🧾
  • --patch-with-stat — a synonym for -p --stat. That's it, that's the whole thing. 🌸
  • -z — separates the commits with NULs instead of newlines. Also, when --raw or --numstat has been given, it does not munge pathnames and uses 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 — shows only the name of each changed file in the post-image tree. File names are often encoded in UTF-8 — for more info see the discussion about encoding in the git-log(1) manual page. 📛
  • --name-status — shows only the name(s) and status of each changed file. Wanna know what the status letters mean? See the description of the --diff-filter option. And just like --name-only, the file names are often encoded in UTF-8. 🏷️
  • --submodule[=<format>] — tells Git how to show differences in submodules. When you specify --submodule=short, the short format is used — it 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, listing the commits in the range like git-submodule(1) summary does. When --submodule=diff is specified, the diff format is used, showing an inline diff of the changes in the submodule contents between the commit range. Defaults to diff.submodule or the short format if the config option is unset. 🪆
  • --color[=<when>] — show colored diff. --color (i.e. without =<when>) is the same as --color=always. <when> can be one of always, never, or auto. 🌈
  • --no-color — turns off colored diff, same as --color=never. Sad beige diff energy, but ok. 🚫🎨
  • --color-moved[=<mode>] — moved lines of code get colored differently. The <mode> defaults to no if the option is not given, and to zebra if the option with no mode is given. The mode must be one of:
    • no — moved lines are not highlighted. 😐
    • default — is a synonym for zebra. Heads up: 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 — turns off move detection. This can be used to override configuration settings, and it's the same as --color-moved=no. ✂️
  • --color-moved-ws=<mode>,... — 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, and it's 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 +/-/` 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. And 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. 😱

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>. Two-for-one deal, we love to see it. 💖
  • --no-renames — turns off rename detection, even when the configuration file gives the default to do so. Not today, renames. ✋
  • --rename-empty, --no-rename-empty — do we let empty blobs count as a rename source? That's the whole question bestie 💅 flip it on or off, that's it.
  • --check — this one's a lil warning system 🚨 it yells at you if your changes introduce conflict markers or whitespace errors. What counts as a "whitespace error" is up to your core.whitespace config. By default it's trailing whitespaces (including lines that are literally only whitespace) plus a space character that's immediately followed by a tab character inside the initial indent of the line. Exits with non-zero status if it finds problems. Heads up tho: not compatible with --exit-code 🙅‍♀️
  • --ws-error-highlight=<kind> — pick where the whitespace errors get highlighted: the context, old, or new lines of the diff ✨ stack multiple values with commas, none resets all the previous values, default resets the list back to new, and all is just a shorthand for old,new,context. If you don't pass this option and the diff.wsErrorHighlight variable isn't set, only whitespace errors in new lines get highlighted. The 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. no more abbrev-ing, we're showing the whole thing 👑
  • --binary — in addition to --full-index, output a binary diff that can actually be applied with git-apply. It implies --patch 🫶
  • --abbrev[=<n>] — instead of the full 40-byte hexadecimal object name in diff-raw format output and diff-tree header lines, show the shortest prefix that's at least <n> hexdigits long and uniquely refers to the object. In diff-patch output format, --full-index takes higher precedence — so if --full-index is specified, full blob names show up no matter what --abbrev says 😤 and yeah, you can pick a non-default number of digits with --abbrev=<n>.
  • -B[<n>][/<m>], --break-rewrites[=[<n>][/<m>]] — this breaks complete rewrite changes into pairs of delete and create 🦋 it's got two whole purposes:
    • it changes how a total rewrite of a file gets shown — not as a messy series of deletions and insertions mixed together with a few lines that happen to match textually as context, but as a single deletion of everything old followed by a single insertion of everything new. The number <m> controls this side of -B (defaults to 60%). So -B/70% means: less than 30% of the original should remain in the result for Git to call it a total rewrite (otherwise the resulting patch is that mixed deletion/insertion series 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 side of -B (defaults to 50%). So -B20% means: a change with addition and deletion compared to 20% or more of the file's size is eligible for being picked up as a possible source of a rename to another file.
  • -M[<n>], --find-renames[=<n>] — if we're generating diffs, detect and report renames for each commit bestie 👀 (for following files across renames while traversing history, see --follow). If <n> is specified, it's a threshold on the similarity index — i.e. the amount of additions/deletions compared to the file's size. Like, -M90% means Git should consider a delete/add pair to be a rename if more than 90% of the file hasn't changed. No % sign? Then the number reads as a fraction with a decimal point before it — so -M5 becomes 0.5, which is the same as -M50%. Similarly -M05 is the same as -M5%. Wanna limit detection to exact renames only? -M100%. The default similarity index is 50% 🌸
  • -C[<n>], --find-copies[=<n>] — detect copies as well as renames 🫶 also peep --find-copies-harder. If <n> is specified, it means the exact same thing as for -M<n>.
  • --find-copies-harder — okay so for performance reasons, by default the -C option only finds copies 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 a copy. Warning tho: 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 purely for people who just wanna concentrate on reviewing the text after the change 👀 and yeah, the output obviously lacks enough info to apply such a patch in reverse even manually, hence the name of the option. When used together with -B, it also omits 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 stops 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. Oh and a value of 0 is treated as unlimited ✨
  • --diff-filter=[(A|C|D|M|R|T|U|X|B)...[*]] — filter to only show files that are Added (A), Copied (C), Deleted (D), Modified (M), Renamed (R), have their type changed (T) — i.e. regular file, symlink, submodule, ... — 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's any file that matches the other criteria in the comparison; if there's no file that matches the other criteria, nothing gets selected.

Also — these upper-case letters can be downcased to exclude 😤 e.g. --diff-filter=ad excludes added and deleted paths.

ngl, not all diffs can feature all types. For instance, copied and renamed entries can't appear if detection for those types is disabled 🙈
  • -S<string> — look for differences that change the number of occurrences of the specified <string> (i.e. addition/deletion) in a file. Made for the scripter's use 🧚 it's lowkey so useful when you're hunting for an exact block of code (like a struct) and wanna know the history of that block since it first came into being: use the feature iteratively, feed the interesting block in the preimage back into -S, and keep going until you hit the very first version of the block 🔥 binary files are searched too, btw.
  • -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 this diff in the same file:
+    return frotz(nitfol, two->ptr, 1, 0);
...
-    hit = frotz(nitfol, mf2.ptr, 1, 0);

so git log -G"frotz\(nitfol" will show this commit, but git log -S"frotz\(nitfol" --pickaxe-regex will not (because the number of occurrences of that string didn't change) 😌 unless --text is supplied, patches of binary files without a textconv filter get ignored. See the pickaxe entry in gitdiffcore(7) for more 💜

  • --find-object=<object-id> — look for differences that change the number of occurrences of the specified object. Similar to -S, the only diff is that the argument isn't a specific string but a specific object id 🦋 the object can be a blob or a submodule commit. It implies the -t option in git-log so trees get found too.
  • --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> you gave to -S as an extended POSIX regular expression to match ✨
  • -O<orderfile> — controls the order files appear in the output. This overrides the diff.orderFile configuration variable (see git-config(1)). Wanna cancel diff.orderFile? Hit it with -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 come out first, all files matching the second pattern (but not the first) come next, and so on. All files that don't match any pattern come out last, like 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> gets parsed like this:

  • Blank lines are ignored, so you can use them as separators for readability 🎀
  • Lines starting with a hash (#) are ignored, so you can use them for comments. Add a backslash (\) to the beginning of the pattern if it starts with a hash.
  • Every other line contains a single pattern.

Patterns have the same syntax and semantics as the 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 git difftool command, and ngl they may not be super useful otherwise 🙈
  • -R — swap the two inputs; that is, show differences from index or on-disk file to tree contents 🔄
  • --relative[=<path>], --no-relative — when you’re running from a subdirectory of the project, this tells Git to exclude changes outside that directory and show pathnames relative to it 💅. If you are not in a subdirectory (like in a bare repository), you can name which subdirectory to make the output relative to by passing a <path> argument. --no-relative can be used to countermand both the diff.relative config option and any previous --relative. slay.
  • -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 the 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 — show the 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)).
  • --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, and only changes to the commits stored in the superproject are shown (this was the behavior until 1.7.0). Using all hides all changes to submodules 💀.
  • --src-prefix=<prefix> — show the given source <prefix> instead of "a/" 💖.
  • --dst-prefix=<prefix> — show the given destination <prefix> instead of "b/" 💖.
  • --no-prefix — do not show any source or destination prefix 🚫.
  • --default-prefix — use the default source and destination prefixes ("a/" and "b/") 🌈. This overrides configuration variables such as diff.noprefix, diff.srcPrefix, diff.dstPrefix, and diff.mnemonicPrefix (see git-config(1)).
  • --line-prefix=<prefix> — prepend an additional <prefix> to every line of output ✨.
  • --ita-invisible-in-index — by default entries added by git add -N appear as an existing empty file in git diff and a new file in git diff --cached 🙈. This option makes the entry appear as a new file in git diff and non-existent in git diff --cached. This option could be reverted with --ita-visible-in-index. Both options are experimental and could be removed in future ⚠️.
  • --max-depth=<depth> — for each pathspec given on the 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, 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).

🔥 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 👑.

  1. It is followed by one or more extended header lines:
old mode <mode>
new mode <mode>
deleted file mode <mode>
new file mode <mode>
copy from <path>
copy to <path>
rename from <path>
rename to <path>
similarity index <number>
dissimilarity index <number>
index <hash>..<hash> <mode>

File modes <mode> are printed as 6-digit octal numbers including the file type and file permission bits 🔢.

Path names in extended headers do not include the a/ and b/ prefixes 🚫.

The similarity index is the percentage of unchanged lines, and the dissimilarity index is the percentage of changed lines. It is a rounded down integer, followed by a percent sign 💯. The similarity index value of 100% is thus reserved for two equal files, while 100% dissimilarity means that no line from the old file made it into the new one 😬.

The index line includes the blob object names before and after the change. The <mode> is included if the file mode does not change; otherwise, separate lines indicate the old and the new mode 🫶.

  1. Pathnames with "unusual" characters are quoted as explained for the configuration variable core.quotePath (see git-config(1)) 🌸.
  2. 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
  1. 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 💅

okay so any diff-generating command can take the -c or --cc option to produce a combined diff when showing a merge. This is literally the default format when showing merges with git-diff(1) or git-show(1). Note also that you can give a 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, bestie:

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’s preceded by a "git diff" header, and it looks like this when the -c option is used:
diff --combined file

or like this when the --cc option is used:

diff --cc file
  1. It’s followed by one or more extended header lines — this example shows a merge with two parents, iykyk:
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.

  1. 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.

  1. Chunk header format is modified to prevent people from accidentally feeding it to patch -p1. Combined diff format was created for review of merge commit changes, and was not meant to be applied. The change is similar to the change in the extended index header:
@@@ <from-file-range> <from-file-range> <to-file-range> @@@

There are (number of parents + 1) @ characters in the chunk header for combined diff format.

Unlike the traditional unified diff format, which shows two files A and B with a single column that has - (minus — appears in A but removed in B), + (plus — missing in A but added to B), or " " (space — unchanged) prefix, this format compares two or more files file1, file2,... with one file X, and shows how X differs from each of fileN. One column for each of fileN is prepended to the output line to note how X’s line is different from it.

A - character in the column N means that the line appears in fileN but it does not appear in the result. A + character in the column N means that the line appears in the result, and fileN does not have that line (in other words, the line was added, from the point of view of that parent).

In the above example output, the function signature was changed from both files (hence two - removals from both file1 and file2, plus ++ to mean one line that was added does not appear in either file1 or file2). Also, eight other lines are the same from file1 but do not appear in file2 (hence prefixed with +).

When shown by git diff-tree -c, it compares the parents of a merge commit with the merge result (i.e. file1..fileN are the parents). When shown by git diff-files -c, it compares the two unresolved merge parents with the working tree file (i.e. file1 is stage 2 aka “our version”, file2 is stage 3 aka “their version”).

🌸 EXAMPLES 🌸

  • git show v1.0.0 — Shows the tag v1.0.0, along with the object the tag points at. iconic behavior tbh.
  • git show v1.0.0^{tree} — Shows the tree pointed to by the tag v1.0.0.
  • git show -s --format=%s v1.0.0^{commit} — Shows the subject of the commit pointed to by the tag v1.0.0.
  • git show next~10:Documentation/README — Shows the contents of the file Documentation/README as they were current in the 10th last commit of the branch next.
  • git show master:Makefile master:t/Makefile — Concatenates the contents of said Makefiles in the head of the branch master. slay.

🦋 DISCUSSION 🦋

Git is to some extent character encoding agnostic. yes, bestie, it really said “encoding? I barely know her” in a very specific, technical way.

  • The contents of the blob objects are uninterpreted sequences of bytes. There is no encoding translation at the core level.
  • Path names are encoded in UTF-8 normalization form C. This applies to tree objects, the index file, ref names, as well as path names in command line arguments, environment variables and config files (.git/config (see git-config(1)), gitignore(5), gitattributes(5) and gitmodules(5)). Note that Git at the core level treats path names simply as sequences of non-NUL bytes, there are no path name encoding conversions (except on Mac and Windows). Therefore, using non-ASCII path names will mostly work even on platforms and file systems that use legacy extended ASCII encodings. However, repositories created on such systems will not work properly on UTF-8-based systems (e.g. Linux, Mac, Windows) and vice versa. Additionally, many Git-based tools simply assume path names to be UTF-8 and will fail to display other encodings correctly.
  • Commit log messages are typically encoded in UTF-8, but other extended ASCII encodings are also supported. This includes ISO-8859-x, CP125x and many others, but not UTF-16/32, EBCDIC and CJK multi-byte encodings (GBK, Shift-JIS, Big5, EUC-x, CP9xx etc.).

Although we encourage that the commit log messages are encoded in UTF-8, both the core and Git Porcelain are designed not to force UTF-8 on projects. If all participants of a particular project find it more convenient to use legacy encodings, Git does not forbid it. However, there are a few things to keep in mind.

  1. git commit and git commit-tree issue a warning if the commit log message given to it does not look like a valid UTF-8 string, unless you explicitly say your project uses a legacy encoding. The way to say this is to have i18n.commitEncoding in .git/config file, like this:
[i18n]
        commitEncoding = ISO-8859-1

Commit objects created with the above setting record the value of i18n.commitEncoding in their encoding header. This is to help other people who look at them later. Lack of this header implies that the commit log message is encoded in UTF-8.

  1. git log, git show, git blame and friends look at the encoding header of a commit object, and try to re-code the log message into UTF-8 unless otherwise specified. You can specify the desired output encoding with i18n.logOutputEncoding in .git/config file, like this:
[i18n]
        logOutputEncoding = ISO-8859-1

If you do not have this configuration variable, the value of i18n.commitEncoding is used instead.

Note that we deliberately chose not to re-code the commit log message when a commit is made to force UTF-8 at the commit object level, because re-coding to UTF-8 is not necessarily a reversible operation.

👑 GIT 👑

Part of the git(1) suite. cute, iconic, part of the family. 💖

This page is from Git 2.56.0, dated 2026-09-27, and it’s the GIT-SHOW(1) manual page — okay bye bestie, go show off your commits! 🫶✨

📦 where this page comes from