Git: Mastering Version Control

Managing worktrees and the staging area

In Chapter 3, Developing with Git, we learned that, besides the working directory where you work on changes, and the local repository where you store those changes as revisions, there is also a third section between them: the staging area, sometimes called the index.

In the same chapter, we also learned how to examine the status of the working directory, and how to view the differences. We saw how to create a new commit out of the working directory, or out of the staging area.

Now it is time to learn how to examine and modify the state of individual files.

Examining files and directories

It is easy to examine the contents of the working directory: just use the standard tools for viewing files (for example, an ...