Skip to Content
Navigation:

A stick figure smiling

Here's a preview from my zine, Oh Shit, Git! If you want to see more comics like this, sign up for my saturday comics newsletter or browse more comics!

get the zine!
Image of a comic. To read the full HTML alt text, click "read the transcript". get the zine!
read the transcript!

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