File diff

To compare the state of your files with those in the staging area, you can use git diff -r HEAD. The -r flag means "compare to a particular revision", and HEAD is a shortcut meaning "the most recent commit".

  • git diff -r HEAD

Seeing changes to a specific file

A project's entire log can be overwhelming, so it's often useful to inspect only the changes to particular files or directories. You can do this using git log path, where path is the path to a specific file or directory. The log for a file shows changes made to that file; the log for a directory shows when files were added or deleted in that directory, rather than when the contents of the directory's files were changed.