Differences between the staged and unstaged versions of the same file, using difftool

Question

Is there a way of viewing the differences between the staged and unstaged versions of the same file?

For example:

Changes to be committed:

    modified:   conf/application.conf

Changes not staged for commit:
  (use "git add/rm <file>..." to update what will be committed)
  (use "git checkout -- <file>..." to discard changes in working directory)

    modified:   conf/application.conf

This happens when I stage a change and then I modify the file again, without staging it.

EDIT

The git status -vv command is not good enough, because I need to use the diff / difftool command. That's because in practice there are too many changes in too many files, and scrolling through all of them is not efficient. But diff / difftool allows me to specify the file I am interested in.

Answer 1

git diff will show the difference between your workspace and the index. (the index is where the staged files live)

This may not seem obvious because we usually use git diff to see the changes in the workspace vs what is checked in. However, technically git diff shows workspace vs index, and if you haven't added changes to the index, then the index matches what you checked out.

• to see workspace vs repo: git diff HEAD
• to see index vs repos: git diff --cached (can also use --staged)
• to see workspace vs index: git diff

Answer 2

If you run the command git status -vv you will see the textual changes of the file. See doc.