Unix in a Nutshell, 4th Edition

Name

diff

Synopsis

    diff [options] [diroptions]file1 file2

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 converts 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, comm, diff3, dircmp, and sdiff.

GNU/Linux and Mac OS X use GNU diff. See http://www.gnu.org/software/diffutils.

Common Options

Options -c, -C, -D, -e, -f, -h, -n, -u cannot be combined with each other (they are mutually exclusive).

-b, --ignore-space-change

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

-c

Produce output in “context diff” format, with three lines of context.

-Cn, --context=n

Like -c, but produce n lines of context.

-Dsymbol, --ifdef=symbol

Merge file1 and file2 into a single file containing conditional C preprocessor directives (#ifdef). Defining symbol and then compiling yields file2; compiling without defining symbol yields file1 ...