diff(1)

diff(1)

-C n

Output format similar to -cbut with n lines of context.

-h

Do a fast, half-hearted job. This option works only when changed stretches are short and

 

well separated, but can be used on ®les of unlimited length.

-Dstring

 

Create a merged version of ®le1 and ®le2 on the standard output, with C preprocessor con-

 

trols included so that a compilation of the result without de®ning string is equivalent to com-

 

piling ®le1, while compiling the result with string de®ned is equivalent to compiling ®le2.

-b

Ignore trailing blanks (spaces and tabs) and treat other strings of blanks as equal.

-w

Ignore all whitespace (blanks and tabs). For example, if ( a == b ) and if(a==b)

 

are treated as equal.

-i

Ignores uppercase/lowercase differences. Thus A is treated the same as a.

-t

Expand tabs in output lines. Normal or -coutput adds one or more characters to the front

 

of each line. Resulting misalignment of indentation in the original source lines can make the

 

output listing dif®cult to interpret. This option preserves original source ®le indentation.

EXTERNAL INFLUENCES

Environment Variables

LANG determines the locale to use for the locale categories when both LC_ALL and the corresponding environment variable (beginning with LC_) do not specify a locale. If LANG is not set or is set to the empty string, a default of "C" (see lang(5)) is used.

LC_CTYPE determines the space characters for the diff command, and the interpretation of text within ®le as single- and/or multi-byte characters.

LC_MESSAGES determines the language in which messages are displayed.

If any internationalization variable contains an invalid setting, diff and diffh behave as if all internationalization variables are set to "C". See environ(5).

International Code Set Support

Single- and multi-byte character code sets are supported with the exception that diff and diffh do not recognize multi-byte alternative space characters.

RETURN VALUE

Upon completion, diff returns with one of the following exit values:

0No differences were found.

1Differences were found.

>1 An error occurred.

EXAMPLES

The following command creates a script ®le script:

diff -e x1 x2 >script

w is added to the end of the script in order to save the ®le:

echo w >> script

The script ®le can then be used to create the ®le x2 from the ®le x1 using the editor ed in the following manner:

ed x1 < script

The following command produces the difference output with 2 lines of context information before and after the line that was different:

diff -C2 x1 x2

The following command ignores all blanks and tabs and ignores uppercase-lowercase differences.

diff -wi x1 x2

d

HP-UX Release 11i: December 2000

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Section 1−179