How to make “git diff” output normal diff format (non-unified, non-context)?

Question

I want git diff to output normal, plain old diff output (not unified diff, and not context diff).

I want this:

$ diff file1 file2
2c2
&l         


        

Answer 1

You can use same script (see man git(1) for details):

$ cat diff.sh
#!/bin/sh
# get args: path old-file old-hex old-mode new-file new-hex new-mode

diff "$2" "$5"

return=$?
if [ $return -le 1 ]; then
    exit 0
else
    exit $return
fi

$ GIT_EXTERNAL_DIFF=./diff.sh git diff HEAD^..HEAD

Answer 2

git difftool --extcmd=diff

or, without prompting:

git difftool --extcmd=diff --no-prompt

This is git difftool rather than git diff but it is doing what I want.