Mastering Vim

Comparing two files

Using vimdiff to compare two files is fairly simple. Let's look at two files in animal_farm/ : animals/cat.py and animals/dog.py. We'd like to know what's different between the two.

The files from this example are available from https://github.com/PacktPublishing/Mastering-Vim/tree/master/Chapter05/animal_farm.

Open the files with vimdiff:

$ vimdiff animals/cat.py animals/dog.py

You will be greeted to the following screen (how colorful the screen is will depend on your colorscheme):

You can see animals/cat.py open in a split on the left and animals/dog.py in a split on the right. Different lines are highlighted ...