Description - Mks.com

NAME
diff, diffh, bdiff, vdiff32
diff, diffh, bdiff, vdiff32 — compare two text files and show differences
SYNOPSIS
diff [-BbefHhimnrsw] [-C n] [-c[n]] [-Difname] [-Mmark] [-U[b|B|l|L]] path1 path2
diff [-BbefHhimnrsw] [-C n] [-c[n]] [-Difname] [-Mmark] [-U[b|B|l|L]] file... dir
diffh [-Bbefimnrsw] [-C n] [-c[n]] [-Difname] [-Mmark] [-U[b|B|l|L]] path1 path2
diffh [-Bbefimnrsw] [-C n] [-c[n]] [-Difname] [-Mmark] [-U[b|B|l|L]] file... dir
bdiff [-Bbefimnrsw] [-C n] [-c[n]] [-Difname] [-Mmark] [-U[b|B|l|L]] path1 path2 [n]
bdiff [-Bbefimnrsw] [-C n] [-c[n]] [-Difname] [-Mmark] [-U[b|B|l|L]] file... dir [n]
vdiff32
DESCRIPTION
The diff command attempts to determine the minimal set of changes needed either to convert a
file named path1 into path2 or the group of files indicated by file... into files of the same name
found under the directory dir. Besides normal text files, diff also works on 16-bit Unicode files.
Such files normally begin with a two-byte marker indicating whether the file's Unicode characters
are big-endian or little-endian.
If either (but only one) file name is -, diff reads that file from the standard input. If only two path
names appear on the command line and one of path1 or path2 is a directory, diff uses a file in
that directory with the same name as the other file name. If both are directories, diff compares
files with the same file names under the two directories. However, diff does not compare files in
subdirectories unless you specify the -r option. When comparing two directories, diff does not
compare block special files, character special files, or FIFO special files to any other files and does
not compare regular files to directories.
If more than two path names appear on the command line, the last path name is assumed to be a
directory and the preceding path names to be files. diff then compares each file in the list to a file
with the name under the specified directory.
By default, output consists of descriptions of the changes in a style reminiscent of the ed text
editor. A line indicating the type of change is given. The three types are a (append), d (delete), and
c (change). The output is symmetric in the sense that a delete in path1 is the counterpart of an
append in path2. diff prefixes each operation with a line number (or range) in path1 and suffixes
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