Re: [BUG] "git diff --word-diff" gives a diff while they are only space changes
On Sat, 9 May 2026 17:55:26 +0200, Vincent Lefevre wrote:
Show 7 quoted lines
> For wdiff, it is just described as "display word differences between
> text files", and it does exactly that. For instance, if there are no
> differences in words, it shows no differences.
>
> For git with the --word-diff, there is actually no documentation,
> except the use of "changed words" and "word diff". No mention of
> line diff at all! So this is quite confusing.
Maybe something like this would be worth adding to the docs:
-- >8 --
diff --git a/Documentation/diff-options.adoc b/Documentation/diff-options.adoc
index 8a63b5e164..665473e61a 100644
--- a/Documentation/diff-options.adoc
+++ b/Documentation/diff-options.adoc
@@ -457,6 +457,11 @@ endif::git-diff[]
+
Note that despite the name of the first mode, color is used to
highlight the changed parts in all modes if enabled.
++
+Word diff works by finding word-level changes within each hunk of
+the line-level diff. The line-level alignment determines which
+changed lines are compared to each other, which can affect the
+word-level output.
`--word-diff-regex=<regex>`::
Use _<regex>_ to decide what a word is, instead of considering
-- >8 --
Michael Montalbo <mmontalbo@gmail.com>