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What are the differences between the following git commands?
git diff HEADgit diff HEAD^git diff --cached or the synonym git diff --staged git diff
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Comparing changes with git diff Diffing is a function that takes two input data sets and outputs the changes between them. git diff is a multi-use Git command that when executed runs a diff function on Git data sources. These data sources can be commits, branches, files and more.
git diff --staged will only show changes to files in the "staged" area. git diff HEAD will show all changes to tracked files. If you have all changes staged for commit, then both commands will output the same.
The diff can be done with git diff (followed by the filename or nothing if you want to see the diff of all modified files). But if you already did something like git add * , you have to undo with git restore --staged .
In most cases, Git picks A and B in such a way that you can think of A/- as "old" content and B/+ as "new" content. Let's look at our example: Change #1 contains two lines prepended with a "+". Since no counterpart in A existed for these lines (no lines with "-"), this means that these lines were added.
git diff HEAD - Shows what has changed since the last commit.git diff HEAD^ - Shows what has changed since the commit before the latest commit.git diff --cached - Show what has been added to the index via git add but not yet committed.git diff - Show what has changed but hasn't been added to the index yet via git add.It looks like this:
Working Directory <----+--------+------+ | | | | | | | | V | | | "git add" | | | | diff | | | | | | V | | | Index <----+ diff HEAD | | | | | | | | | V | | | "git commit" | | | | diff --cached | | | diff --staged | | V | | | HEAD <----+--------+ | | | | diff HEAD^ V | previous "git commit" | | | | | V | HEAD^ <--------------------+ From the Git Community Book:
git diff
will show you changes in the working directory that are not yet staged for the next commit.
git diff --cached
will show you the difference between the index and your last commit; what you would be committing if you run "git commit" without the "-a" option.
git diff HEAD
shows changes in the working directory since your last commit; what you would be committing if you run "git commit -a".
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