Mac OS X in a Nutshell

Name

diff

Synopsis

diff [options] [diroptions] file1 
                     file2
                  

Compares two text files. diff reports lines that differ between file1 and file2. Output consists of lines of context from each file, with file1 text flagged by a < symbol and file2 text by a > symbol. Context lines are preceded by the ed command (a, c, or d) that are used to convert file1 to file2. If one of the files is -, standard input is read. If one of the files is a directory, diff locates the filename in that directory corresponding to the other argument (e.g., diff my_dir junk is the same as diff my_ dir/junk junk). If both arguments are directories, diff reports lines that differ between all pairs of files having equivalent names (e.g., olddir/program and newdir/program); in addition, diff lists filenames unique to one directory, as well as subdirectories common to both. See also cmp.

Options

Options -c, -C, -D, -e, -f, -h, and -n cannot be combined with one another (they are mutually exclusive).

-a, --text

Treat all files as text files. Useful for checking to see if binary files are identical.

-b, --ignore-space-change

Ignore repeating blanks and end-of-line blanks; treat successive blanks as one.

-B, --ignore-blank-lines

Ignore blank lines in files.

-c

Context diff: print 3 lines surrounding each changed line.

-C n, --context[= n ]

Context diff: print n lines surrounding each changed line. The default context is 3 lines.

--changed-group-format= format

Use format to output a line group containing differing lines ...