Museum

Home

Lab Overview

Retrotechnology Articles

Online Manuals

⇒ diff3(1) — AIX PS/2 1.2.1

Media Vault

Software Library

Restoration Projects

Artifacts Sought

Related Articles

diff



DIFF3(1,C)                  AIX Commands Reference                   DIFF3(1,C)



-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
diff3



PURPOSE

Compares three files.

SYNTAX


         +--------+
diff3 ---| one of |-- file1 -- file2 -- file3 --|
         | +----+ |
         +-| -e |-+
           | -x |
           | -3 |
           +----+


DESCRIPTION

The diff3 command reads three versions of a file and writes to standard output
the ranges of text that differ, flagged with the following codes:

====       All three files differ.

====1      file1 differs.

====2      file2 differs.

====3      file3 differs.

The type of change needed to convert a given range of a given file to match
another file is indicated in one of these two ways in the output:

file  :  n1  a Where file is 1, 2, or 3, text is to be added after line n1.

file  :  n1[,n2]  c
               Where file is file 1, 2, or 3, text between line n1 and line n2
               is to be changed.  If n1 = n2, the range may be abbreviated to
               n1.

The original contents of the range follows immediately after a c indication.
When the contents of two files are identical, the diff3 command does not show
the contents of the lower-numbered file, although it shows the location of the
identical lines for each.







Processed November 8, 1990        DIFF3(1,C)                                  1





DIFF3(1,C)                  AIX Commands Reference                   DIFF3(1,C)



Notes:

  1. Editing scripts produced by the -e flag cannot create lines consisting
    only of a single period (".").

  2. The diff3 command does not work on files longer than 64K bytes.

FLAGS

-e Creates an edit script for use with the ed command to incorporate into file1
   all changes between file2 and file3 (that is, the changes that normally
   would be flagged ==== and ====3).

-x Produces an edit script to incorporate only changes flagged ====.

-3 Produces an edit script to incorporate only changes flagged ====3.

EXAMPLE

The following table illustrates the contents of three files fruit.a, fruit.b,
and fruit.c:

+------------+-------------+------------+
|fruit.a     | fruit.b     | fruit.c    |
+------------+-------------+------------+
|            |             |            |
|  banana    |   apple     |   grape    |
|  grape     |   banana    |   grapefrui|
|  kiwi      |   grapefruit|   kiwi     |
|  lemon     |   kiwi      |   lemon    |
|  mango     |   orange    |   mango    |
|  orange    |   peach     |   orange   |
|  peach     |   pear      |   peach    |
|  pare      |             |   pear     |
|            |             |            |
+------------+-------------+------------+

To list the differences among the three files:

  diff3  fruit.a  fruit.b  fruit.c

The output from the diff3 command shows the differences as follows. (Comments
to the right do not appear in the output.)

"
====   "o All three files are different."
1:1,2c "   - Lines 1 and 2 of the first file, "fruit.a
  banana
  grape
2:1,3c "   - Lines 1 through 3 of the second file, "fruit.b
  apple
  banana



Processed November 8, 1990        DIFF3(1,C)                                  2





DIFF3(1,C)                  AIX Commands Reference                   DIFF3(1,C)



  grapefruit
3:1,2c "   - Lines 1 and 2 of the third file, "fruit.c
  grape
  grapefruit
====2  "o The second file, "fruit.b", is different."
1:4,5c "   - Lines 4 and 5 are the same in "fruit.a" and "fruit.c"."
2:4a   "   - To make "fruit.b" the same as "fruit.a " and "fruit.c","
3:4,5c "     add text after line 4."
  lemon
  mango
====1  o The first file, "fruit.a", is different from files "fruit.b" and
1:8c                                                            "file.c"
  pare
2:7c      - Line 7 of "fruit.b" and line 8 of "fruit.c" are the same
3:8c
  pear

FILES

/tmp/d3*            Temporary files for diff3.
/usr/lib/diff3prog  diff3 executable program.

RELATED INFORMATION

See the following command:  "diff."






























Processed November 8, 1990        DIFF3(1,C)                                  3



Typewritten Software • bear@typewritten.org • Edmonds, WA 98026