"Harald Nordgren via GitGitGadget" [off-list ref] writes:

From: Harald Nordgren <redacted>

Add --no-indicators to replace '+', '-', and ' ' indicators in the
left margin with spaces. Colors are preserved, allowing diffs to be
distinguished by color alone.

This is useful when copy-pasting diff output, as the indicators no
longer need to be manually removed.

Signed-off-by: Harald Nordgren <redacted>
---
    diff: add '--no-indicators' option

Published-As: https://github.com/gitgitgadget/git/releases/tag/pr-git-2133%2FHaraldNordgren%2Fno-indicators-v1
Fetch-It-Via: git fetch https://github.com/gitgitgadget/git pr-git-2133/HaraldNordgren/no-indicators-v1
Pull-Request: https://github.com/git/git/pull/2133

 diff.c                 | 17 +++++++++++++++++
 t/t4000-diff-format.sh | 32 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
 2 files changed, 49 insertions(+)

Would a 'sed' command work for this? Something like:

    $ git diff --color=always HEAD~ \
        | sed -E '/^(\x1b\[[0-9;]*m)*(-{3} a|\+{3} b)/b
                  s/^((\x1b\[[0-9;]*m)*)[-+]/\1 /'

My impression is that indicators are wanted for diff's most (all?) of
the time.

Collin