DIFF3

Section: User Commands (1)
Updated: 24 January 1991
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NAME

diff3 - GNU diff3, display line-by-line differences between 3 files, including binary files

SYNOPSIS

diff [ options ] filename1 filename2 filename3

WARNING

This manual page is updated only occasionally, because the GNU project does not use nroff.

DESCRIPTION

This version of diff3 has all of BSD diff3's features, with the following additional features.

An input file may end in a non-newline character. With the -m option, an incomplete last line stays incomplete. Other output styles treat incomplete lines like diff.

The file name '-' denotes the standard input. It can appear at most once.

OPTIONS

GNU diff3 has the following additional options:

-a: Always treat files as text and compare them line-by-line, even if they do not appear to be text.
-i: Include 'w' and 'q' commands at the end of the output, to write out the changed file, thus emulating System V behavior. One of the edit script options -e, -E, -x, -X, -3 must also be specified.
-m: Apply the edit script to the first file and send the result to standard output. Unlike piping diff3's output to ed(1), this works even for binary files and incomplete lines. -E is assumed if no edit script option is specified. This option is incompatible with -i.
-L label: Use the specified label for lines output by the -E and -X options, one of which must also be specified. This option may be given zero, one, or two times; the first label marks <<<<<<< lines and the second marks >>>>>>> lines. The default labels are the names of the first and third files on the command line. Thus `diff3 -L X -L Z -E A B C' acts like `diff3 -E A B C', except that the output looks like it came from files named X and Z rather than from files named A and C.

DIAGNOSTICS

Exit status 0 means success, 1 means overlaps were found and -E or -X was specified, and 2 means trouble.

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