Show git diff on file in staging area

Question

Is there a way I can see the changes that were made to a file after I have done git add file?

That is, when I do:

git add file
git diff file

no diff is shown. I guess there's a way to see the differences since the last commit but I don't know what that is.

mipadi · Accepted Answer · 2015-03-30T03:19:20.747

1824

You can show changes that have been staged with the --cached flag:

$ git diff --cached

In more recent versions of git, you can also use the --staged flag (--staged is a synonym for --cached):

$ git diff --staged

edited Mar 30 '15 at 03:19

answered Aug 20 '10 at 03:27

mipadi

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Is there a way to use difftool (i.e. DiffMerge) to show this result? – Terry Mar 15 '14 at 21:43
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@Terry: Yes, `difftool` accepts most of the same flags as `diff`. – mipadi Mar 16 '14 at 00:56

score 200 · Answer 2 · answered Sep 06 '12 at 07:25

200

In order to see the changes that have been staged already, you can pass the -–staged option to git diff (in pre-1.6 versions of Git, use –-cached).

git diff --staged
git diff --cached

answered Sep 06 '12 at 07:25

Arturo Herrero

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score 75 · Answer 3 · edited Jun 07 '18 at 13:17

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You can also use git diff HEAD file to show the diff for a specific file.

See the EXAMPLE section under git-diff(1)

edited Jun 07 '18 at 13:17

Empty2k12

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answered Aug 20 '10 at 02:56

J-16 SDiZ

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This shows both the diffs in the staged and non-staged files. This is what I was looking for. Thanks – NHDaly May 05 '16 at 19:53

Show git diff on file in staging area

3 Answers3