| 1 | .TH DIFF 1
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| 2 | .SH NAME
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| 3 | diff \- print differences between two files
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| 4 | .SH SYNOPSIS
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| 5 | \fBdiff \fR [\fB\-c \fR|\fB \-e \fR|\fB \-C \fIn\fR\] [\fB\-br\fR]\fIfile1 file2\fR\fR
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| 6 | .br
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| 7 | .de FL
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| 8 | .TP
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| 9 | \\fB\\$1\\fR
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| 10 | \\$2
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| 11 | ..
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| 12 | .de EX
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| 13 | .TP 20
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| 14 | \\fB\\$1\\fR
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| 15 | # \\$2
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| 16 | ..
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| 17 | .SH OPTIONS
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| 18 | .FL "\-C \fIn" "Produce output that contains \fIn\fR lines of context"
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| 19 | .FL "\-b" "Ignore white space when comparing"
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| 20 | .FL "\-c" "Produce output that contains three lines of context"
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| 21 | .FL "\-e" "Produce an \fIed\fR-script to convert \fIfile1\fR into \fIfile2\fR"
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| 22 | .FL "\-r" "Apply \fIdiff\fR recursively to files and directories of the same name, when \fIfile1\fR and \fIfile2\fR are both directories"
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| 23 | .SH EXAMPLES
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| 24 | .EX "diff file1 file2" "Print differences between 2 files"
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| 25 | .EX "diff -C 0 file1 file2" "Same as above"
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| 26 | .EX "diff -C 3 file1 file2" "Output three lines of context with every difference encountered"
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| 27 | .EX "diff -c file1 file2" Same as above"
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| 28 | .EX "diff /etc /dev" "Compares recursively the directories \fI/etc\fR and \fI/dev\fR"
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| 29 | .EX "diff passwd /etc" "Compares \fI./passwd\fR to \fI/etc/passwd"
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| 30 | .SH DESCRIPTION
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| 31 | .PP
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| 32 | \fIDiff\fR compares two files and generates a list of lines telling how
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| 33 | the two files differ. Lines may not be longer than 128 characters.
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| 34 | If the two arguments on the command line are both directories,
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| 35 | \fIdiff\fR recursively steps through all subdirectories comparing
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| 36 | files of the same name. If a file name is found only in one directory,
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| 37 | a diagnostic message is written to \fIstdout\fR. A file that is of
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| 38 | either block special, character special or FIFO special type, cannot
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| 39 | be compared to any other file.
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| 40 | On the other hand, if there is one directory and one file given on the
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| 41 | command line, \fIdiff\fR tries to compare the file with the same name
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| 42 | as \fIfile\fR in the directory \fIdirectory\fR.
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| 43 | .SH "SEE ALSO"
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| 44 | .BR cdiff (1),
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| 45 | .BR cmp (1),
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| 46 | .BR comm (1),
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| 47 | .BR patch (1).
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