diff_cache() queues unchanged filepairs if the flag find_copies_harder is set, and uses diff_change() for that. This function allocates a filespec for each side, does a few other things that are unnecessary for unchanged filepairs and always sets the diff_flag has_changes, which is simply misleading in this case. Add a new streamlined function for queuing unchanged filepairs and use it in show_modified(), which is called by diff_cache() via oneway_diff() and do_oneway_diff(). It allocates only a single filespec for each filepair and uses it twice with reference counting. This has a measurable effect if there are a lot of them, like in the Linux repo: Benchmark 1: ./git_v2.52.0 -C ../linux diff --cached --find-copies-harder Time (mean ± σ): 31.8 ms ± 0.2 ms [User: 24.2 ms, System: 6.3 ms] Range (min … max): 31.5 ms … 32.3 ms 85 runs Benchmark 2: ./git -C ../linux diff --cached --find-copies-harder Time (mean ± σ): 23.9 ms ± 0.2 ms [User: 18.1 ms, System: 4.6 ms] Range (min … max): 23.5 ms … 24.4 ms 111 runs Summary ./git -C ../linux diff --cached --find-copies-harder ran 1.33 ± 0.01 times faster than ./git_v2.52.0 -C ../linux diff --cached --find-copies-harder Signed-off-by: René Scharfe <l.s.r@web.de> Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>