How do I list just the files that would be committed?

Question

Is there any way to get a list of files that will be committed when I type the following?

git commit -m "my changes" 

git status lists too much. I could strip out all the words, but I'd rather not. And I don't want to be told about untracked files.

I've tried

git ls-files -md 

but that doesn't show files that have been recently added, but not yet committed.

I'm looking for the same output you'd get from

svn status -q 

For example $ svn status -q
A file.py
M dir/database.py
M start.py

Answer 1

This is what I was looking for. Thanks to notnoop for the lead I needed. I wanted to post back my solution in case it helps others.

git diff HEAD  --name-only 

Since I intended to do

git commit -s -F mesage.txt 

with the files found in the first line.

My intent is to create a little system that totally ignores the index i.e. that I never need to do git add. (From what I understand, the index is useful when creating patches, which isn't by no means the norm in my workflow.)