git ls-files: howto identify new files (added, not committed)?

Question

After I called git add <file> the command git status will show me something like:

... new file:    <file> 

Somehow I can't manage it to get the same information by using ls-files, it (ls-files -tc in this case) will show me:

H <commited file> H <other commited file> H <file> 

There seems no commandline switch to exist for new files. The file is reported as cached, which is ok, but how do I find out that it is not committed at this time?

Is this possible with ls-files or some similar command (where I do not have to parse a lot of output like in the case of git status)?

Answer 1

You want to use git diff --cached. With --name-only it'll list all the files you've changed in the index relative to HEAD. With --name-status you can get the status symbol too, with --diff-filter you can specify which set of files you want to show ('A' for newly added files, for instance). Use -M to turn on move detection and -C for copy detection if you want them.

For the strictest reading of what you wrote, git diff --cached --name-only --diff-filter=A will list all the files you've added since HEAD which don't exist in HEAD.

Answer 2

Clarification: This is a way to show the files that I intend to add. This is not what the OP was looking for, but I'll leave this post in case it's useful to others.

This seems to show only the files that I have added [to my working copy, not the index] but aren't matched by my standard ignore patterns:

 $ git ls-files --others --exclude-standard 

Without --exclude-standard, it also shows files that are ignored when I run git status.