How to control the number of lines that surround each difference when running `git diff`?

Question

Depending on what I am diff ing, sometimes I want to see several lines (say 10) above and below the + - deletions, sometimes I just want to see a couple of lines surrounding them.

Is there a way to tell git the line number it should show me?

Answer 1

You can choose -U . On the man page:

-U<n>, --unified=<n>

Create diff with context lines instead of the usual three. Implies -p.

Answer 2

git diff -U<num> . The default value is 3.