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This article will teach you how to use git diffthe command to compare files, commits, and branches in Git. We use git diffthe command to show the differences between files resulting from two commits or the current state of our repo and a previous commit.

This command comes in handy when comparing data sources.

git diffOrder

grammar:

git diff

By default, the command will show the uncommitted changes in our repository.

This command will show us all the deleted and added lines of code in the original file. Let’s look at some examples.

Git Diff commit

We can compare two commits in the same branch in the following context.

git diff <commit-1-id> <commit-2-id>

example:

This is the commit history of our local repository.

$ git log --oneline
c84e6f9 (HEAD -> main) Third Code Correction
9af4e38 Second Code Correction
a45ca97 First Code Correction
8c1cefc My Commit Message
c5bf6c8 Sixth Commit
3b641e0 Fourth Commit
21ca1e7 Third Commit
b2f7710 Initial commit

In the scenario where we want to see the differences between the Third Code Correctionand commits, how would we go about this?Second Code Correction

We will run git diffthe command and mention the hashes of our two commits as shown below.

$ git diff 9af4e38 c84e6f9
diff --git a/insert.php b/insert.php
index 985a7af..a5f31c6 100644
--- a/insert.php
+++ b/insert.php
@@ -1,7 +1,6 @@
 <?php
 // Use ls command to shell_exec function
 $output = shell_exec('git');
-
 // Display the list of all files and directories
 echo "<pre>$output</pre>";
 ?>

The above output shows 67the difference of lines. We can see Third Code Correctionthat commit removed 67the empty line of lines.

Git diff branches

To compare two branches in our repository, we run this command.

git diff <branch1> <branch2>

If we wanted to compare masterthe branch with another dev.7branch called , we would run this command.

git diff master dev.7

If we add two points between branches, Git will compare the latest commits between the two.

Git diff files

We can use the command in the following context git diffto compare two files in our repository.

git diff <path-to-file1> <path-to-file2>

example:

$ git diff Head:sample.php HEAD:insert.php
diff --git a/sample.php b/insert.php
index dce9c57..a5f31c6 100644
--- a/sample.php
+++ b/insert.php
@@ -1,14 +1,6 @@
 <?php
-    $a= 23;
-    $nationality = "Dutch";
-    //applying conditions on nationality and age
-    if ($nationality == "Dutch")
-    {
-        if ($a >= 18) {
-            echo "Eligible to vote";
-        }
-        else {
-            echo "Not eligible to vote";
-        }
-    }
+// Use ls command to shell_exec function
+$output = shell_exec('git');
+// Display the list of all files and directories
+echo "<pre>$output</pre>";

Notice how we git diffspecify the branch in the command. If the files were in different branches, you would need to specify the branch for each file.