Re: [BUG] "git diff --word-diff" gives a diff while they are only space changes

From: Johannes Sixt <j6t@kdbg.org>
Date: May 9, 2026, 06:16 UTC
Message-ID: <cb359a26-2878-41a0-a554-9bcd28c7404c@kdbg.org>
In-Reply-To: <20260508213943.GP5260@qaa.vinc17.org>

Am 08.05.26 um 23:39 schrieb Vincent Lefevre:

Show 21 quoted lines

> On 2026-05-08 14:48:01 +0200, Johannes Sixt wrote:
>> This is expected behavior.
>>
>> git diff --word-diff is not agnostic to whitespace; if you drop
>> --word-diff, you see the line-diff that the word-diff is based on. If
>> you want whitespace-agnostic word-diff, you have to add -w.
> 
> This is not how it is documented. Even when using "git diff" without
> --word-diff, but with GNU wdiff instead, the output is fine:
> 
> $ git diff file1 file2 | wdiff -d
> diff --git a/file1 b/file2
> index da04344..0074613 100644
> [--- a/file1-]
> {+++ b/file2+}
> @@ -1,5 +1,5 @@
> 1
>  2
>  3
>  2
>  4

It would have helped if you had pointed to, or cited, the documentation. I cannot find documentation from which I can derive that the above *must* be the correct output. In particular, I don't find any mention that --word-diff operates exactly like GNU wdiff.

-- Hannes