How to list only the names of files that changed between two commits

I have a bunch of commits in the repository. I want to see a list of files changed between two commits - from SHA1 to SHA2.

What command should I use?

git diff --name-only SHA1 SHA2

where you only need to include enough of the SHA hash to identify the commits. The order of the SHAs does not matter. The output (which includes the relative path, not just the file name) follows this format:

 dir 1/dir 2/filename.ext
 dir 3/dir 4/other filename.ext

You can also do, for example

git diff --name-only HEAD~10 HEAD~5

to see the differences between the tenth latest commit and the fifth latest (or so).

git diff --name-status [SHA1 [SHA2]]

is like --name-only, except you get a simple prefix telling you what happened to the file (modified, deleted, added...)

git log --name-status --oneline [SHA1..SHA2]

is similar, but commits are listed after the commit message, so you can see when a file was changed.

• if you're interested in just what happened to certain files/folders you can append -- <filename> [<filename>...] to the git log version.

• if you want to see what happened for a single commit, call it SHA1, then do
  git log --name-status --oneline [SHA1^..SHA1]

File status flags:

It seems that no one has mentioned the switch --stat:

$ git diff --stat HEAD~5 HEAD
 .../java/org/apache/calcite/rex/RexSimplify.java   | 50 +++++++++++++++++-----
 .../apache/calcite/sql/fun/SqlTrimFunction.java    |  2 +-
 .../apache/calcite/sql2rel/SqlToRelConverter.java  | 16 +++++++
 .../org/apache/calcite/util/SaffronProperties.java | 19 ++++----
 .../org/apache/calcite/test/RexProgramTest.java    | 24 +++++++++++
 .../apache/calcite/test/SqlToRelConverterTest.java |  8 ++++
 .../apache/calcite/test/SqlToRelConverterTest.xml  | 15 +++++++
 pom.xml                                            |  2 +-
 .../apache/calcite/adapter/spark/SparkRules.java   |  7 +--
 9 files changed, 117 insertions(+), 26 deletions(-)

There are also --numstat

$ git diff --numstat HEAD~5 HEAD
40      10      core/src/main/java/org/apache/calcite/rex/RexSimplify.java
1       1       core/src/main/java/org/apache/calcite/sql/fun/SqlTrimFunction.java
16      0       core/src/main/java/org/apache/calcite/sql2rel/SqlToRelConverter.java
8       11      core/src/main/java/org/apache/calcite/util/SaffronProperties.java
24      0       core/src/test/java/org/apache/calcite/test/RexProgramTest.java
8       0       core/src/test/java/org/apache/calcite/test/SqlToRelConverterTest.java
15      0       core/src/test/resources/org/apache/calcite/test/SqlToRelConverterTest.xml
1       1       pom.xml
4       3       spark/src/main/java/org/apache/calcite/adapter/spark/SparkRules.java

and --shortstat

$ git diff --shortstat HEAD~5 HEAD
9 files changed, 117 insertions(+), 26 deletions(-)

But for seeing the files changed between your branch and its common ancestor with another branch (say origin/master):

git diff --name-only `git merge-base origin/master HEAD`

The biggest issue with every previous answer is that you get fed into a pager which is extremely annoying if you want to use the information you're trying to get out of the repository. Especially if you're a developer that would rather be learning the business logic of the application your supposed to be developing instead of learning vim commands.

Using --no-pager solves that issue.

git --no-pager diff --name-only sha1 sha2

To supplement @artfulrobot's answer, if you want to show changed files between two branches:

git diff --name-status mybranch..myotherbranch

Be careful on precedence. If you place the newer branch first then it would show files as deleted rather than added.

Adding a grep can refine things further:

git diff --name-status mybranch..myotherbranch | grep "A\t"

That will then show only files added in myotherbranch.

Also note, if you just want to see the changed files between the last commit and the one before it, this works fine:

git show --name-only

Add the below alias to your ~/.bash_profile file, and then run source ~/.bash_profile; now anytime you need to see the updated files in the last commit, run, showfiles from your git repository.

alias showfiles='git show --pretty="format:" --name-only'

The following works well for me:

git show --name-only --format=tformat: SHA1..SHA2

It can also be used with a single commit:

git show --name-only --format=tformat: SHA1

which is handy for use in Jenkins where you are provided with a list of changeset SHA hash values, and want to iterate over them to see which files have been changed.

This is similar to a couple of the previous answers, but using tformat: rather than format: removes the separator space between commits.

This will show the changes in files:

git diff --word-diff SHA1 SHA2

Just for someone who needs to focus only on Java files, this is my solution:

 git diff --name-status SHA1 SHA2 | grep '\.java$'

In case someone is looking for the list of changed files, including staged files

git diff HEAD --name-only --relative --diff-filter=AMCR

git diff HEAD --name-only --relative --diff-filter=AMCR sha-1 sha-2

Remove --relative if you want absolute paths.

Use

git log --pretty=oneline > C:\filename.log

which will log only a oneline (--pretty=oneline) that's the name of the changed file. It will also log all the details to your output file.

Based on git diff --name-status I wrote the git-diffview Git extension that renders a hierarchical tree view of what changed between two paths.

As artfulrobot said in his answer:

git diff --name-status [SHA1 [SHA2]]

My example:

git diff --name-status 78a09k12067c24d8f117886c4723ccf111af4997 
4b95d595812211553070046bf2ebd807c0862cca
M       views/layouts/default.ctp
M       webroot/css/theme.css
A       webroot/img/theme/logo.png