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Suppose you’ve edited 2 files

$ git status 
On branch main
Changes to be committed:

modified: staged.txt 
Changes not staged for commit:

modified: unstaged.txt

("modified: staged.txt" are staged changes added with git add. modified: unstaged.txt are unstaged changes.)

Here are the 3 ways git can show you a diff for these changes:

  • git diff: unstaged changes
  • git diff --staged: staged changes
  • git diff HEAD: staged+unstaged changes

A couple more diff tricks:

  • git diff --stat gives you a summary of which files were changed & number of added/deleted lines
  • git diff --check checks for merge conflict markers & whitespace errors