Comparing and Merging Files

diff, diff3, sdiff, cmp, and patch

Edition 1.3, for diff 2.5 and patch 2.1

September 1993

• Overview
• 1. What Comparison Means
  • 1.1 Hunks
  • 1.2 Suppressing Differences in Blank and Tab Spacing
  • 1.3 Suppressing Differences in Blank Lines
  • 1.4 Suppressing Case Differences
  • 1.5 Suppressing Lines Matching a Regular Expression
  • 1.6 Summarizing Which Files Differ
  • 1.7 Binary Files and Forcing Text Comparisons
• 2. diff Output Formats
  • 2.1 Two Sample Input Files
  • 2.2 Showing Differences Without Context
    • 2.2.1 Detailed Description of Normal Format
    • 2.2.2 An Example of Normal Format
  • 2.3 Showing Differences in Their Context
    • 2.3.1 Context Format
      • 2.3.1.1 Detailed Description of Context Format
      • 2.3.1.2 An Example of Context Format
      • 2.3.1.3 An Example of Context Format with Less Context
    • 2.3.2 Unified Format
      • 2.3.2.1 Detailed Description of Unified Format
      • 2.3.2.2 An Example of Unified Format
    • 2.3.3 Showing Which Sections Differences Are in
      • 2.3.3.1 Showing Lines That Match Regular Expressions
      • 2.3.3.2 Showing C Function Headings
    • 2.3.4 Showing Alternate File Names
  • 2.4 Showing Differences Side by Side
  • 2.5 Controlling Side by Side Format
    • 2.5.1 An Example of Side by Side Format
  • 2.6 Making Edit Scripts
    • 2.6.1 ed Scripts
      • 2.6.1.1 Detailed Description of ed Format
      • 2.6.1.2 Example ed Script
    • 2.6.2 Forward ed Scripts
    • 2.6.3 RCS Scripts
  • 2.7 Merging Files with If-then-else
    • 2.7.1 Line Group Formats
    • 2.7.2 Line Formats
    • 2.7.3 Detailed Description of If-then-else Format
    • 2.7.4 An Example of If-then-else Format
• 3. Comparing Directories
• 4. Making diff Output Prettier
  • 4.1 Preserving Tabstop Alignment
  • 4.2 Paginating diff Output
• 5. diff Performance Tradeoffs
• 6. Comparing Three Files
  • 6.1 A Third Sample Input File
  • 6.2 Detailed Description of diff3 Normal Format
  • 6.3 diff3 Hunks
  • 6.4 An Example of diff3 Normal Format
• 7. Merging From a Common Ancestor
  • 7.1 Selecting Which Changes to Incorporate
  • 7.2 Marking Conflicts
  • 7.3 Generating the Merged Output Directly
  • 7.4 How diff3 Merges Incomplete Lines
  • 7.5 Saving the Changed File
• 8. Interactive Merging with sdiff
  • 8.1 Specifying diff Options to sdiff
  • 8.2 Merge Commands
• 9. Merging with patch
  • 9.1 Selecting the patch Input Format
  • 9.2 Applying Imperfect Patches
    • 9.2.1 Applying Patches with Changed White Space
    • 9.2.2 Applying Reversed Patches
    • 9.2.3 Helping patch Find Inexact Matches
  • 9.3 Removing Empty Files
  • 9.4 Multiple Patches in a File
  • 9.5 Messages and Questions from patch
• 10. Tips for Making Patch Distributions
• 11. Invoking cmp
  • 11.1 Options to cmp
• 12. Invoking diff
  • 12.1 Options to diff
• 13. Invoking diff3
  • 13.1 Options to diff3
• 14. Invoking patch
  • 14.1 Applying Patches in Other Directories
  • 14.2 Backup File Names
  • 14.3 Reject File Names
  • 14.4 Options to patch
• 15. Invoking sdiff
  • 15.1 Options to sdiff
• 16. Incomplete Lines
• 17. Future Projects
  • 17.1 Suggested Projects for Improving GNU diff and patch
    • 17.1.1 Handling Changes to the Directory Structure
    • 17.1.2 Files that are Neither Directories Nor Regular Files
    • 17.1.3 File Names that Contain Unusual Characters
    • 17.1.4 Arbitrary Limits
    • 17.1.5 Handling Files that Do Not Fit in Memory
    • 17.1.6 Ignoring Certain Changes
  • 17.2 Reporting Bugs
• Concept Index

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