What’s the difference between the dotnet build -c Release and dotnet publish commands?

When running dotnet build -c Release and dotnet publish the outputs are placed in
/bin/Release/net8.0/ and /bin/Release/net8.0/publish, respectively. Inspecting the contents, it looks identical.

dotnet build defaults to Debug configuration, while dotnet publish defaults to Release.

References:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/core/tools/dotnet-build
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/core/tools/dotnet-publish