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Comparing and Merging Files with GNU diff and patch

for Diffutils 2.8.1 and `patch` 2.5.4

5 April 2002

David MacKenzie, Paul Eggert, Richard Stallman

Edited for publication by Brian Gough

Comparing and Merging Files with GNU diff and patch

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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
- 2.4 Showing Differences Side by Side
  - 2.4.1 Controlling Side by Side Format
  - 2.4.2 An Example of Side by Side Format
- 2.5 Making Edit Scripts
- 2.6 Merging Files with If-then-else
3 Incomplete Lines
4 Comparing Directories
5 Making diff Output Prettier
- 5.1 Preserving Tab Stop Alignment
- 5.2 Paginating diff Output
6 diff Performance Tradeoffs
7 Comparing Three Files
- 7.1 A Third Sample Input File
- 7.2 Detailed Description of diff3 Normal Format
- 7.3 diff3 Hunks
- 7.4 An Example of diff3 Normal Format
8 Merging From a Common Ancestor
- 8.1 Selecting Which Changes to Incorporate
- 8.2 Marking Conflicts
- 8.3 Generating the Merged Output Directly
- 8.4 How diff3 Merges Incomplete Lines
- 8.5 Saving the Changed File
9 Interactive Merging with sdiff
- 9.1 Specifying diff Options to sdiff
- 9.2 Merge Commands
10 Merging with patch
- 10.1 Selecting the patch Input Format
- 10.2 Revision Control
- 10.3 Applying Imperfect Patches
- 10.4 Creating and Removing Files
- 10.5 Updating Time Stamps on Patched Files
- 10.6 Multiple Patches in a File
- 10.7 Applying Patches in Other Directories
- 10.8 Backup Files
- 10.9 Backup File Names
- 10.10 Reject File Names
- 10.11 Messages and Questions from patch
- 10.12 patch and the POSIX Standard
- 10.13 GNU patch and Traditional patch
11 Tips for Making and Using Patches
- 11.1 Tips for Patch Producers
- 11.2 Tips for Patch Consumers
- 11.3 Avoiding Common Mistakes
- 11.4 Generating Smaller Patches
12 Invoking cmp
- 12.1 Options to cmp
13 Invoking diff
- 13.1 Options to diff
14 Invoking diff3
- 14.1 Options to diff3
15 Invoking patch
- 15.1 Options to patch
16 Invoking sdiff
- 16.1 Options to sdiff
17 Standards conformance
18 Reporting Bugs
A Copying This Manual
- A.1 GNU Free Documentation License
  - A.1.1 ADDENDUM: How to use this License for your documents
History
B Index

ISBN 0954161750

Comparing and Merging Files with GNU diff and patch

See the print edition