Finding diff between current and last version

Question

Using Git, how can you find the difference between the current and the last version?

git diff last version:HEAD 

Answer 1

I don't really understand the meaning of "last version".

As the previous commit can be accessed with HEAD^, I think that you are looking for something like:

git diff HEAD^ HEAD 

That also can be applied for a :commithash

git diff $commithash^ $commithash 

As of Git 1.8.5, @ is an alias for HEAD, so you can use:

git diff @~..@ 

The following will also work:

git show 

If you want to know the diff between head and any commit you can use:

git diff commit_id HEAD 

And this will launch your visual diff tool (if configured):

git difftool HEAD^ HEAD 

Since comparison to HEAD is default you can omit it (as pointed out by Orient):

git diff @^ git diff HEAD^ git diff commit_id 

Warnings

• @ScottF and @Panzercrisis explain in the comments that on Windows the ~ character must be used instead of ^.

Answer 2

Assuming "current version" is the working directory (uncommitted modifications) and "last version" is HEAD (last committed modifications for the current branch), simply do

git diff HEAD 

Credit for the following goes to user Cerran.

And if you always skip the staging area with -a when you commit, then you can simply use git diff.

Summary

1. git diff shows unstaged changes.
2. git diff --cached shows staged changes.
3. git diff HEAD shows all changes (both staged and unstaged).

Source: git-diff(1) Manual Page – Cerran