Want a clean list of files touched by a commit without wading through a sea of diffs and developer drama This guide gives the small set of commands you actually need to see which files changed in a Git commit and in comparisons between commits

Quick ways to show changed files

These commands are the bread and butter for anyone doing version control work in the CLI or writing scripts for CI pipelines Each one focuses on file names not full patch bodies

Show names only for a single commit

If you only care about the file list run this

git show --name-only COMMIT

This prints one path per line after the commit metadata It is the go to when you need paths only for scripts code owners checks or polite snooping

Show names with status codes

Want to know if a file was added modified or deleted without parsing the whole diff Use this

git show --name-status COMMIT

Output shows a short status letter like A M or D next to each path so you can scan who broke what without crying

Compare two commits for changed file names

When you need to see what differs between two points in history this is your friend

git diff --name-only BASE_COMMIT TARGET_COMMIT

Handy for pull request checks quick reviews and determining what to include in a deploy script

Use log to list files for the last commit

If you just want the file list for HEAD without extra fuss try this

git log -1 --name-only

Works well inside CI steps or hooks that operate on the most recent commit

Practical tips and developer tricks

• Pipe to grep to filter paths by pattern for focused checks
• Use sort -u to dedupe results when comparing ranges
• Combine with xargs to run checks or linters only on changed files
• Prefer name only outputs when you do not need the diff itself to save time and bandwidth

Recap and when to use each command

Use --name-only when you want just paths Use --name-status when you also want change types Use git diff for comparisons and git log when you are querying history These are the essential CLI developer tips for listing commit files without reading a novel

Now go forth and inspect commits like a civilized chaos agent