From: Michael Montalbo Date: Tue, 12 May 2026 20:56:19 GMT Subject: Re: [BUG] "git diff --word-diff" gives a diff while they are only space changes Message-ID: On Sat, 9 May 2026 17:55:26 +0200, Vincent Lefevre wrote: > 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=`:: Use __ to decide what a word is, instead of considering -- >8 --