sdiff1

Usage

Overview

sdiff displays two files side by side, with any differences between the two highlighted as follows: new lines are marked with ‘’; deleted lines are marked with ‘’; and changed lines are marked with ‘’.

sdiff can also be used to interactively merge two files, prompting at each set of differences. See the -o option for an explanation.

The options are:

-l --left-column

Only print the left column for identical lines.

-o --output 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 | 1

Choose left set of diffs.

r | 2

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.

q

Quit sdiff.

-s --suppress-common-lines

Skip identical lines.

-w --width width

Print a maximum of width characters on each line. The default is 130 characters.

Options passed to diff(1) are:

-a --text

Treat file1 and file2 as text files.

-b --ignore-space-change

Ignore trailing blank spaces.

-d --minimal

Minimize diff size.

-I --ignore-matching-lines regexp

Ignore line changes matching regexp. All lines in the change must match regexp for the change to be ignored.

-i --ignore-case

Do a case-insensitive comparison.

-t --expand-tabs

Expand tabs to spaces.

-W --ignore-all-space

Ignore all spaces.

-B --ignore-blank-lines

Ignore blank lines.

-E --ignore-tab-expansion

Treat tabs and eight spaces as the same.

-H --speed-large-files

Assume scattered small changes in a large file.

--ignore-file-name-case

Ignore the case of file names.

--no-ignore-file-name-case

Do not ignore file name case.

--strip-trailing-cr

Skip identical lines.

--tabsize NUM

Change the size of tabs (default is 8.)

--diff-program PROGRAM

Use PROGRAM to compare files.

Environment

EDITOR, VISUAL

Specifies an editor to use with the -o option. If both EDITOR and VISUAL are set, VISUAL takes precedence. If neither EDITOR nor VISUAL are set, the default is vi(1).

TMPDIR

Specifies a directory for temporary files to be created. The default is /tmp.

Caveats

Tabs are treated as anywhere from one to eight characters wide, depending on the current column. Terminals that treat tabs as eight characters wide will look best.