What is the difference between “git branch” and “git checkout -b”?

Question

I used git checkout -b to create a new branch. I think that git branch does the same thing. How do these two commands differ, if they differ at all

Answer 1

There are forms of both commands that are similar (looking at git-scm docs Version 2.11.1):

git branch  

and

git checkout -b  

The latter executing the branch command first and then adding the checkout. In that form explicitly references to git-branch's doc:

Specifying -b causes a new branch to be created as if git-branch[2] were called and then checked out