git diff on file in staging

Question

Hi,

I was wondering if 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 showed... But I guess there's a way to see the differences since the last commit.

Any ideas ?

Thanks,

A

Answer 1

try git diff HEAD file ?

See the EXAMPLE section under git-diff(1)

Answer 2

Of course you can't see anything, the file was just added: git doesn't have any history of that file so it can't diff it against nothing. Even when you commit, the file is also just added, so when you diff you'll get nothing.

What you need is "status"

git status

to see what files have been added, removed modified or with unknown status.

Answer 3

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

$ git diff --cached