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

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

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Vincent Lefèvre [off-list ref] - Web: <https://www.vinc17.net/>
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