Let's say I have attempted a merge from branch A to branch B -- the merge failed because there are conflicts in file F.
Until now I have been doing a
git diff --word-diff HEAD:F master:F which gets boring after a while. Is there some alternative out of the box command that allows me to avoid this, or will I have to save this little script and make it accessible somewhere in my computer's $PATH?
Whenever the scope of a repeated operation is going to be limited (i.e. a relatively short session inside a single terminal) and not likely to occur again in the near future, I prefer to wrap it in a bash function in the current shell. This avoids the problem of having to find a good name for the script before putting it in $PATH.
In your case, typing the following line into the shell
function mydiff() { git diff --word-diff HEAD:"$1" master:"$1"; } will enable you performing diff with a much shorter command mydiff F.
As Leon answered you can make a tiny shell function (or shell alias) for this, or as Frodon commented you can make a Git alias.
More usefully, during a conflicted merge, the local (--ours) and other (--theirs) commit IDs are conveniently named HEAD and MERGE_HEAD respectively. Hence you don't have to hard-code the name master into your shell function, shell alias, or Git alias, and:
[alias] wdiff = "!f() { git diff --word-diff HEAD:\"$1\" MERGE_HEAD:\"$1\"; }; f" would do the trick here, for instance.
git alias?