Suppressing diffs for deleted files in git

Question

I want to get a quick overview of the local changes in my repository, but I don't want a diff that shows deleted files, since every single line is a minus.

Basically, I want something like 'git diff HEAD <list of modified files only>'. In an ideal world, it would be preceded by the list of deleted and added files, but not show the diffs within them.

I was most of the way through writing a utility that does this:

git diff HEAD `git status | grep modified | cut -d : -f 2` 

when I wondered if there was some git-y way to do it instead. Is there a flag I'm missing? I'd love to preserve the color output, too.

Answer 1

In Git versions 1.8.5 and newer, you can do this using the --diff-filter option and specifying "d" (lowercase) to tell it to exclude deleted files.

 $ git diff --diff-filter=d 

In Git versions older than 1.8.5, you can do this with the --diff-filter option and specifying all but the "D" (deleted) criteria:

 $ git diff --diff-filter=ACMRTUXB 

Answer 2

git diff -D (or equivalently git diff --irreversible-delete) will omit the diff body for deleted files. I don't think there's an equivalent for added files.