To be clear, I don't mean to imply that diff-files should include files that are not the index. I was trying to say that as a user, the documentation gave me a different impression. For background, my intent was to have a script to look for local git repos that with unstaged changes. After some trial and error, I found that git-ls-files gave me what I needed. However, I wanted to point out why I initially believed git-diff-files with show "added files". Think of this more as user feedback. On Wed, Jan 3, 2018 at 3:53 PM, Junio C Hamano <gitster@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > John Cheng <johnlicheng@xxxxxxxxx> writes: > >> I wanted to know if git diff-files shows files that are not in the >> index but are in the working tree. > > At least in the original design of Git, that would fundamentally be > impossible, as Git _only_ cares about paths that are in the index, > so a new file won't be in the picture until it is added. Because a > change is shown as "A"dded by the diff family of commands only when > the old side lacks a path that appears in the new side, there is no > way "diff-files" that compares the index and the working tree would > see a path that is missing from the old (i.e. the index) side. -- --- John L Cheng