On Fri, Dec 19, 2025 at 6:27 AM Phillip Wood [off-list ref] wrote:

If you want to restore some lines from a previous version of the file
then it would be worth trying out "git restore -p" as Ben suggested. If
there is some other use for this then it would be helpful to understand
a bit more about it. I'm struggling to see why it would be useful to be
able to copy and paste a mixture of insertions and deletions without the
'+' and '-' indicators. ...

As someone who makes a lot of tpyos and hsa text that
gets duplicaged because of copypasta duplicaged because
of copypasta errors and on on (ahem), my personal preference
tends towards:

    $ git show <rev1>:<path>  > file.oldver
    $ git show <rev2>:<path>  > file.newver
    $ vim file file.oldver file.newver

and then cut/paste old or new parts in the editor,
rather than with a mouse that doesn't always get
the proper edge points.  The ability to "git show"
specific versions of files is the key here.

(The patch modes of git add/restore are good for
small things.)

Chris