git diff shows twice “\ No newline at end of file” - no need for repetition

Hello,

when a file, which does not end in a new line, is modified, git diff shows twice the text “\ No newline at end of file”. As this piece of the file is not modified, I think git diff should print it once.  In the example below the first “\ No newline at end of file” should be skipped.

I am using git 2.50.0.

As a matter of fact github also shows this information twice - https://github.com/alex-shpak/hugo-book/pull/755/files - which I find is bad.

Greetings
  Дилян

$ git diff 

On 13/08/2025 08:20, Дилян Палаузов wrote:

The "\ No newline at end of file" applies to the line that precedes it. Removing the first instance in your example would mean the the newline at the end of the file had been removed when the line was changed. The output of git matches what GNU diff shows for incomplete lines.

Thanks

Phillip

Phillip Wood <phillip.wood123@gmail.com> writes:

Thanks for a concise and accurate diagnosis. It is unfortunate that we cannot point at POSIX X-<.

Дилян Палаузов <dilyan.palauzov@aegee.org> writes:

[jc: please wrap long lines]

Perhaps "this piece of the file" is indeed modified. In your example, the file before the change had a line with ") }}" on it without terminating newline at the end, and this piece of the file is changed to a line with "}}" on it without terminating newline. The first "\ No newline" belongs to (is a part of) the file before the change and annotates something peculiar about that line, and the second "\ No newline" belongs to (is a part of) the file after the change. If the line were complete before your change and you made it incomplete while removing ") ", then the first "\ No newline" would not have been in the output. If you fixed the incomplete line at the end of file by adding a newline at the end while you removing ") ", then the second "\ No newline" would not have been in the output. But in this case, I think you had it incomplete before the change, and you did not fix it and the incompleteness of the line remained after the change, so "diff" should mark both line before and after the change incomplete with "\ No newline" marker.