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Development Tools Introduction to Git First Commits Viewing Changes to a File

Posted by Kristian Woods
Kristian Woods
23,414 Points

When I enter git diff, I just get an empty line

When I enter git diff, I just get an empty line

4 Answers

Bethany Cooksey
Bethany Cooksey
14,242 Points
Bethany Cooksey
Bethany Cooksey
14,242 Points

Have you made any changes to your file since you last used git add or git commit on it? Because if you haven't, there's no difference for git diff to show.

Bethany Cooksey
Bethany Cooksey
14,242 Points
Bethany Cooksey
Bethany Cooksey
14,242 Points

If you are trying to see changes to a file that's "staged", a.k.a. you just used git add on it but haven't used git commit yet, you can use git diff --staged instead.

Leah Stigale
Leah Stigale
3,349 Points
Leah Stigale
Leah Stigale
3,349 Points

The same thing happened to me, turned out I forgot to hit ctrl + s on the html file so I didn't save any of the changes, thus no changes were found when compared to what was previously committed.

Mark Chesney
Mark Chesney
11,698 Points
Mark Chesney
Mark Chesney
11,698 Points

Yes, I also have modified and staged my saved file, then I've modified it again (without staging it). Both show up properly in the branch master, when I type git status. However, none of these following commands show a diff in my Linux console.

git diff
git diff --staged
git log
git log -p

Does anyone know why? (all other git commands worked properly: init, add, commit -m "msg", etc.

Mark Chesney
Mark Chesney
11,698 Points

ooh, i found the answer: someone else posted on stack overflow:

It turned out that I just needed to set the PAGER environment variable to less (or more) programs to solve both problems.

export PAGER=less
Antonio De Rose
Antonio De Rose
20,882 Points
Antonio De Rose
Antonio De Rose
20,882 Points

that does emphasise, that the code in the working directory is the same to, what is in the staging area. what are you trying to do, and what are you expecting.