Shows a side-by-side comparison of two files.
The options are:
-l
Only print the left column for identical lines.
-o outfile
Interactively merge
file1 and
file2 into
outfile. In this mode, the user is prompted for each set of differences. See
EDITOR and
VISUAL, below, for details of which editor, if any, is invoked.
The commands are as follows:
l
Choose left set of diffs.
r
Choose right set of diffs.
s
Silent mode – identical lines are not printed.
v
Verbose mode – identical lines are printed.
e
Start editing an empty file, which will be merged into outfile upon exiting the editor.
e l
Start editing file with left set of diffs.
e r
Start editing file with right set of diffs.
e b
Start editing file with both sets of diffs.
-w width
Print a maximum of width characters on each line. The default is 130 characters.
Options passed to
diff(1) are:
-a
Treat file1 and file2 as text files.
-b
Ignore trailing blank spaces.
-I regexp
Ignore line changes matching regexp. All lines in the change must match regexp for the change to be ignored.
-i
Do a case-insensitive comparison.
-t
Expand tabs to spaces.
-W
Ignore all spaces (the
-w flag is passed to
diff(1)).