What is the difference between staging and caching?

Question

I\'m reading the book Pro Git, second edition.

It says, on page 21:

git diff --staged This command compares your staged changes t

Answer 1

They are synonymous; from the Git docs:

This form is to view the changes you staged for the next commit relative to the named . Typically you would want comparison with the latest commit, so if you do not give , it defaults to HEAD. If HEAD does not exist (e.g. unborn branches) and is not given, it shows all staged changes. --staged is a synonym of --cached.