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bdiff(1)

bdiff(1)

NAME

bdiff - diff for large ®les

SYNOPSIS

bdiff ®le1 ®le2 [ n ] [-s]

DESCRIPTION

bdiff compares two ®les and produces output identical to what would be produced by diff (see diff(1)), specifying changes that must be made to make the ®les identical. bdiff is designed for handling ®les that are too large for diff, but it can be used on ®les of any length.

bdiff processes ®les as follows:

∙Ignore lines common to the beginning of both ®les.

∙Split the remainder of each ®le into n-line segments, then execute diff on corresponding seg- ments. The default value of n is 3500.

Command-Line Arguments

bdiff recognizes the following command-line arguments:

file1

file2 Names of two ®les to be compared by bdiff. If ®le1 or ®le2 (but not both) is -, standard input is used instead.

nIf a numeric value is present as the third argument, the ®les are divided into n-line seg- ments before processing by diff. Default value for n is 3500. This option is useful when 3500-line segments are too large for processing by diff.

-sSilent option suppresses diagnostic printing by bdiff, but does not suppress possible error messages from diff). If the n and -sarguments are both used, the n argument must precede the -soption on the command line or it will not be properly recognized.

EXTERNAL INFLUENCES

Environment Variables

LC_MESSAGES determines the language in which messages are displayed.

If LC_MESSAGES is not speci®ed in the environment or is set to the empty string, the value of LANG is used as a default for each unspeci®ed or empty variable. If LANG is not speci®ed or is set to the empty string, a default of "C" (see lang(5)) is used instead of LANG.

If any internationalization variable contains an invalid setting, bdiff behaves 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.

DIAGNOSTICS

both files standard input (bd2)

Standard input was speci®ed for both ®les. Only one ®le can be speci®ed as standard input.

non-numeric limit (bd4)

A non-numeric value was speci®ed for the n (third) argument.

EXAMPLES

Find differences between two large ®les: file1 and file2, and place the result in a new ®le named diffs_1.2.

bdiff file1 file2 >diffs_1.2

Do the same, but limit ®le length to 1400 lines; suppress error messages:

bdiff file1 file2 1400 -s >diffs_1.2

WARNINGS

bdiff produces output identical to output from diff, and makes the necessary line-number corrections so that the output looks like it was processed by diff. However, depending on where the ®les are split, bdiff may or may not ®nd a fully minimized set of ®le differences.

Section 1−44

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HP-UX Release 11i: December 2000