Git diff when swapping statements

Question

I have a the following piece of code in my git repo (using git version 2.33.0.windows.2):

int foo = 0;
// foo is set in some manner
if (foo == 1) {
    DoA();
    DoB();
    DoC();
    DoD();
}
if (foo == 2) {
    DoA();
    DoC();
    DoE();
}
// etc

Now if I change this code by switching up the order of the if statements to become like this:

int foo = 0;
// foo is set in some manner
if (foo == 2) {
    DoA();
    DoC();
    DoE();
}
if (foo == 1) {
    DoA();
    DoB();
    DoC();
    DoD();
}
// etc

If I now do a git diff the output is this:

@@ -1,14 +1,14 @@
 int foo = 0;
 // foo is set in some manner
-if (foo == 1) {
+if (foo == 2) {
     DoA();
-    DoB();
     DoC();
-    DoD();
+    DoE();
 }
-if (foo == 2) {
+if (foo == 1) {
     DoA();
+    DoB();
     DoC();

Is there a way to make git 'recognize' that the if statements where swapped instead of some lines that were edited? Of course it is correct, but it would make it easier to review that nothing changed, except the order of the if statements.

What software are you using to review changes? Does it have a choice of diffing algorithms? — grawity
– grawity, Commented Aug 6 at 7:34
Please check the related question for the default diff in git. Check the gitattributes manpage how you can hint the language/type of the file (programing language), some of the differs then give better overview.. e.g. in which function a change is in. — hakre
– hakre, Commented Aug 6 at 7:39
git's diff uses a default context of 3 lines. If you play with the context window, you can get a larger delete and create statements but at the cost of being verbose. Still won't recognize any large reasons of copy/paste lines (swapping) — nabulator
– nabulator, Commented Aug 6 at 7:41
stackoverflow.com/questions/21771313/git-diff-ignore-reorder This question may be relevant too — nabulator
– nabulator, Commented Aug 6 at 7:44

jthill · Accepted Answer · 2025-08-06 07:45:16Z

5

Try git -c diff.algorithm=histogram diff and if you like what you see you can configure that as the default, git config diff.algorithm histogram with or without --global. I suspect the cost of the extra analysis isn't even measurable these days.

answered Aug 6 at 7:45

jthill

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2 Comments

Frank Aug 6 at 7:49

Yes, that seems to work. If I change the algorithm to either patience or histogram it does what I hope it would.

hakre Aug 6 at 8:04

@Frank: This may shed some more insights about patience and historgram: stackoverflow.com/q/32365271/367456

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