Re: how to diff versions of a file

From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date: Feb 3, 2009, 07:34 UTC
Message-ID: <20090203073450.GE21367@sigill.intra.peff.net>
In-Reply-To: <1c5969370902022100h7c03bbb6h2d9f443f877d89ec@mail.gmail.com>

On Tue, Feb 03, 2009 at 12:00:51AM -0500, Matt Graham wrote:

> I'm curious if there's a way to diff between 2 arbitrary versions of a file.
> 
> For example, how can I see the diff between tree.c on HEAD and from 3
> edits (of tree.c) ago?

Others have suggested diffing between two arbitrary revisions, and limiting the diff by path. E.g.:

  git diff HEAD~3 HEAD -- tree.c

which works just fine. But I find it more intuitive to simply specify the diff between two blobs (or trees, if you want), like:

  git diff HEAD~3:tree.c HEAD:tree.c

The added bonus is that you can also use this syntax to diff two files with different names.

-Peff