How to check which files were changed in a commit?

 

Step 1: Open your terminal or Git Bash

 

Before running any Git commands, you need a terminal on your system:

• Windows: open Git Bash or Command Prompt if Git is in your PATH.
• macOS/Linux: open the built-in Terminal.

 

Step 2: Navigate to your local repository

 

Change the working directory to the folder where your Git repository is located.

cd /path/to/your-repo

Replace /path/to/your-repo with the actual path on your machine.

 

Step 3: View the commit history to identify the target commit

 

Use git log to list recent commits along with their SHAs, authors, dates, and messages:

git log --oneline

You’ll see output like:

a1b2c3d Fix typo in README
e4f5g6h Add user authentication
i7j8k9l Update styles for header

Copy the SHA (e.g., a1b2c3d) of the commit you want to inspect.

 

Step 4: List changed files with git show --name-only

 

Once you have the commit SHA, you can display which files changed in that commit:

git show --name-only a1b2c3d

This prints the commit details followed by a list of file paths that were added, modified, or deleted.

 

Step 5: See file change stats with git diff --stat

 

To view a summary of insertions and deletions per file, run:

git diff --stat a1b2c3d^! 

Example output:

 README.md        | 10 +++++++---
 src/app.js       |  5 +++--
 src/styles.css   | 12 ++++++++++--
 3 files changed, 19 insertions(+), 8 deletions(-)

 

Step 6: Drill down into specific file diffs with git show

 

If you want to inspect the specific line changes in each file, simply run:

git show a1b2c3d

This shows the full diff of added (+) and removed (−) lines.

 

Step 7: Use git diff-tree for scripting

 

For automation or scripts, git diff-tree can output only filenames in machine-readable format:

git diff-tree --no-commit-id --name-only -r a1b2c3d

Or to include change types (A = added, M = modified, D = deleted):

git diff-tree --no-commit-id --name-status -r a1b2c3d

 

Step 8: Check changed files on GitHub’s web interface

 

• Go to github.com, sign in, and navigate to your repository.
• Click on the “Commits” link or tab.
• Find the commit in the list and click its SHA or message.
• On the commit page, select the “Files changed” tab to see a list and diff of every changed file.

 

Step 9: Filter changed files by pattern

 

If you want to see changes only for certain file types (e.g., .js files), combine with grep:

git show --name-only a1b2c3d | grep ".js$"

This limits the output to JavaScript files only.