On: A List Apart: Get started with Git

[bbsabelli]

If you use textmate:

  git diff | mate -

[bluesnowmonkey → bbsabelli]

It works without the trailing slash too, if you want to save a couple of keystrokes.

    git diff | mate

[blaix → bbsabelli]

What is the trailing slash for?

[pyre → blaix]

A lot of command-line programs that operate on files take '-' as placeholder for stdin or stdout. For example:

  wget -O - 'http://news.ycombinator.com' | less

The -O option is for specifying an output file, but the '-' says to dump the contents to stdout.

[pjscott → pyre]

Funny; I always use the curl command for that kind of thing, since it automatically pipes to stdout -- but there's something fun you can do with that, too:

    curl http://example.com/foo.tar.gz | tar zxf -

Tar's input file is "-", which means stdin. This downloads and decompresses a tarball to the current directory, without creating a temporary file that I have to delete later.

[blaix → pyre]

Thanks! Always enjoy adding to my command line tool belt.

[hfinney → blaix]

- = dash not slash

[theycallmemorty → bbsabelli]

You can also change your git options to use a different diff tool.