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This is Info file wdiff.info, produced by Makeinfo-1.47 from the input
file ./wdiff.texi.
This file documents the `wdiff' command, which compares two files,
finding which words have been deleted or added to the first for getting
the second.
Copyright (C) 1992 by the Free Software Foundation, Inc.
Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this
manual provided the copyright notice and this permission notice are
preserved on all copies.
Permission is granted to copy and distribute modified versions of
this manual under the conditions for verbatim copying, provided that
the entire resulting derived work is distributed under the terms of a
permission notice identical to this one.
Permission is granted to copy and distribute translations of this
manual into another language, under the above conditions for modified
versions, except that this permission notice may be stated in a
translation approved by the Foundation.
File: wdiff.info, Node: Top, Next: Copying, Prev: (dir), Up: (dir)
This file documents the `wdiff' command, as of release 0.04. This
command compares two files, finding which words have been deleted or
added to the first for getting the second.
* Menu:
* Copying:: How you can copy and share `wdiff'.
* Overview:: Preliminary information.
* Invoking wdiff:: How to run `wdiff'.
* Examples:: Actual examples of `wdiff' usage.
-- The Detailed Node Listing --
File: wdiff.info, Node: Copying, Next: Overview, Prev: Top, Up: Top
GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE
**************************
Version 2, June 1991
Copyright (C) 1989, 1991 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA
Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies
of this license document, but changing it is not allowed.
Preamble
========
The licenses for most software are designed to take away your
freedom to share and change it. By contrast, the GNU General Public
License is intended to guarantee your freedom to share and change free
software--to make sure the software is free for all its users. This
General Public License applies to most of the Free Software
Foundation's software and to any other program whose authors commit to
using it. (Some other Free Software Foundation software is covered by
the GNU Library General Public License instead.) You can apply it to
your programs, too.
When we speak of free software, we are referring to freedom, not
price. Our General Public Licenses are designed to make sure that you
have the freedom to distribute copies of free software (and charge for
this service if you wish), that you receive source code or can get it
if you want it, that you can change the software or use pieces of it in
new free programs; and that you know you can do these things.
To protect your rights, we need to make restrictions that forbid
anyone to deny you these rights or to ask you to surrender the rights.
These restrictions translate to certain responsibilities for you if you
distribute copies of the software, or if you modify it.
For example, if you distribute copies of such a program, whether
gratis or for a fee, you must give the recipients all the rights that
you have. You must make sure that they, too, receive or can get the
source code. And you must show them these terms so they know their
rights.
We protect your rights with two steps: (1) copyright the software,
and (2) offer you this license which gives you legal permission to copy,
distribute and/or modify the software.
Also, for each author's protection and ours, we want to make certain
that everyone understands that there is no warranty for this free
software. If the software is modified by someone else and passed on, we
want its recipients to know that what they have is not the original, so
that any problems introduced by others will not reflect on the original
authors' reputations.
Finally, any free program is threatened constantly by software
patents. We wish to avoid the danger that redistributors of a free
program will individually obtain patent licenses, in effect making the
program proprietary. To prevent this, we have made it clear that any
patent must be licensed for everyone's free use or not licensed at all.
The precise terms and conditions for copying, distribution and
modification follow.
TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR COPYING, DISTRIBUTION AND MODIFICATION
1. This License applies to any program or other work which contains a
notice placed by the copyright holder saying it may be distributed
under the terms of this General Public License. The "Program",
below, refers to any such program or work, and a "work based on
the Program" means either the Program or any derivative work under
copyright law: that is to say, a work containing the Program or a
portion of it, either verbatim or with modifications and/or
translated into another language. (Hereinafter, translation is
included without limitation in the term "modification".) Each
licensee is addressed as "you".
Activities other than copying, distribution and modification are
not covered by this License; they are outside its scope. The act
of running the Program is not restricted, and the output from the
Program is covered only if its contents constitute a work based on
the Program (independent of having been made by running the
Program). Whether that is true depends on what the Program does.
2. You may copy and distribute verbatim copies of the Program's
source code as you receive it, in any medium, provided that you
conspicuously and appropriately publish on each copy an appropriate
copyright notice and disclaimer of warranty; keep intact all the
notices that refer to this License and to the absence of any
warranty; and give any other recipients of the Program a copy of
this License along with the Program.
You may charge a fee for the physical act of transferring a copy,
and you may at your option offer warranty protection in exchange
for a fee.
3. You may modify your copy or copies of the Program or any portion
of it, thus forming a work based on the Program, and copy and
distribute such modifications or work under the terms of Section 1
above, provided that you also meet all of these conditions:
a. You must cause the modified files to carry prominent notices
stating that you changed the files and the date of any change.
b. You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that
in whole or in part contains or is derived from the Program
or any part thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge
to all third parties under the terms of this License.
c. If the modified program normally reads commands interactively
when run, you must cause it, when started running for such
interactive use in the most ordinary way, to print or display
an announcement including an appropriate copyright notice and
a notice that there is no warranty (or else, saying that you
provide a warranty) and that users may redistribute the
program under these conditions, and telling the user how to
view a copy of this License. (Exception: if the Program
itself is interactive but does not normally print such an
announcement, your work based on the Program is not required
to print an announcement.)
These requirements apply to the modified work as a whole. If
identifiable sections of that work are not derived from the
Program, and can be reasonably considered independent and separate
works in themselves, then this License, and its terms, do not
apply to those sections when you distribute them as separate
works. But when you distribute the same sections as part of a
whole which is a work based on the Program, the distribution of
the whole must be on the terms of this License, whose permissions
for other licensees extend to the entire whole, and thus to each
and every part regardless of who wrote it.
Thus, it is not the intent of this section to claim rights or
contest your rights to work written entirely by you; rather, the
intent is to exercise the right to control the distribution of
derivative or collective works based on the Program.
In addition, mere aggregation of another work not based on the
Program with the Program (or with a work based on the Program) on
a volume of a storage or distribution medium does not bring the
other work under the scope of this License.
4. You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it,
under Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms
of Sections 1 and 2 above provided that you also do one of the
following:
a. Accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable
source code, which must be distributed under the terms of
Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for
software interchange; or,
b. Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three
years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your
cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete
machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be
distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a
medium customarily used for software interchange; or,
c. Accompany it with the information you received as to the offer
to distribute corresponding source code. (This alternative is
allowed only for noncommercial distribution and only if you
received the program in object code or executable form with
such an offer, in accord with Subsection b above.)
The source code for a work means the preferred form of the work for
making modifications to it. For an executable work, complete
source code means all the source code for all modules it contains,
plus any associated interface definition files, plus the scripts
used to control compilation and installation of the executable.
However, as a special exception, the source code distributed need
not include anything that is normally distributed (in either
source or binary form) with the major components (compiler,
kernel, and so on) of the operating system on which the executable
runs, unless that component itself accompanies the executable.
If distribution of executable or object code is made by offering
access to copy from a designated place, then offering equivalent
access to copy the source code from the same place counts as
distribution of the source code, even though third parties are not
compelled to copy the source along with the object code.
5. You may not copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute the Program
except as expressly provided under this License. Any attempt
otherwise to copy, modify, sublicense or distribute the Program is
void, and will automatically terminate your rights under this
License. However, parties who have received copies, or rights,
from you under this License will not have their licenses
terminated so long as such parties remain in full compliance.
6. You are not required to accept this License, since you have not
signed it. However, nothing else grants you permission to modify
or distribute the Program or its derivative works. These actions
are prohibited by law if you do not accept this License.
Therefore, by modifying or distributing the Program (or any work
based on the Program), you indicate your acceptance of this
License to do so, and all its terms and conditions for copying,
distributing or modifying the Program or works based on it.
7. Each time you redistribute the Program (or any work based on the
Program), the recipient automatically receives a license from the
original licensor to copy, distribute or modify the Program
subject to these terms and conditions. You may not impose any
further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights
granted herein. You are not responsible for enforcing compliance
by third parties to this License.
8. If, as a consequence of a court judgment or allegation of patent
infringement or for any other reason (not limited to patent
issues), conditions are imposed on you (whether by court order,
agreement or otherwise) that contradict the conditions of this
License, they do not excuse you from the conditions of this
License. If you cannot distribute so as to satisfy simultaneously
your obligations under this License and any other pertinent
obligations, then as a consequence you may not distribute the
Program at all. For example, if a patent license would not permit
royalty-free redistribution of the Program by all those who
receive copies directly or indirectly through you, then the only
way you could satisfy both it and this License would be to refrain
entirely from distribution of the Program.
If any portion of this section is held invalid or unenforceable
under any particular circumstance, the balance of the section is
intended to apply and the section as a whole is intended to apply
in other circumstances.
It is not the purpose of this section to induce you to infringe any
patents or other property right claims or to contest validity of
any such claims; this section has the sole purpose of protecting
the integrity of the free software distribution system, which is
implemented by public license practices. Many people have made
generous contributions to the wide range of software distributed
through that system in reliance on consistent application of that
system; it is up to the author/donor to decide if he or she is
willing to distribute software through any other system and a
licensee cannot impose that choice.
This section is intended to make thoroughly clear what is believed
to be a consequence of the rest of this License.
9. If the distribution and/or use of the Program is restricted in
certain countries either by patents or by copyrighted interfaces,
the original copyright holder who places the Program under this
License may add an explicit geographical distribution limitation
excluding those countries, so that distribution is permitted only
in or among countries not thus excluded. In such case, this
License incorporates the limitation as if written in the body of
this License.
10. The Free Software Foundation may publish revised and/or new
versions of the General Public License from time to time. Such
new versions will be similar in spirit to the present version, but
may differ in detail to address new problems or concerns.
Each version is given a distinguishing version number. If the
Program specifies a version number of this License which applies
to it and "any later version", you have the option of following
the terms and conditions either of that version or of any later
version published by the Free Software Foundation. If the Program
does not specify a version number of this License, you may choose
any version ever published by the Free Software Foundation.
11. If you wish to incorporate parts of the Program into other free
programs whose distribution conditions are different, write to the
author to ask for permission. For software which is copyrighted
by the Free Software Foundation, write to the Free Software
Foundation; we sometimes make exceptions for this. Our decision
will be guided by the two goals of preserving the free status of
all derivatives of our free software and of promoting the sharing
and reuse of software generally.
NO WARRANTY
12. BECAUSE THE PROGRAM IS LICENSED FREE OF CHARGE, THERE IS NO
WARRANTY FOR THE PROGRAM, TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE
LAW. EXCEPT WHEN OTHERWISE STATED IN WRITING THE COPYRIGHT
HOLDERS AND/OR OTHER PARTIES PROVIDE THE PROGRAM "AS IS" WITHOUT
WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT
NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. THE ENTIRE RISK AS TO THE
QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE OF THE PROGRAM IS WITH YOU. SHOULD THE
PROGRAM PROVE DEFECTIVE, YOU ASSUME THE COST OF ALL NECESSARY
SERVICING, REPAIR OR CORRECTION.
13. IN NO EVENT UNLESS REQUIRED BY APPLICABLE LAW OR AGREED TO IN
WRITING WILL ANY COPYRIGHT HOLDER, OR ANY OTHER PARTY WHO MAY
MODIFY AND/OR REDISTRIBUTE THE PROGRAM AS PERMITTED ABOVE, BE
LIABLE TO YOU FOR DAMAGES, INCLUDING ANY GENERAL, SPECIAL,
INCIDENTAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES ARISING OUT OF THE USE OR
INABILITY TO USE THE PROGRAM (INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO LOSS OF
DATA OR DATA BEING RENDERED INACCURATE OR LOSSES SUSTAINED BY YOU
OR THIRD PARTIES OR A FAILURE OF THE PROGRAM TO OPERATE WITH ANY
OTHER PROGRAMS), EVEN IF SUCH HOLDER OR OTHER PARTY HAS BEEN
ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.
END OF TERMS AND CONDITIONS
How to Apply These Terms to Your New Programs
=============================================
If you develop a new program, and you want it to be of the greatest
possible use to the public, the best way to achieve this is to make it
free software which everyone can redistribute and change under these
terms.
To do so, attach the following notices to the program. It is safest
to attach them to the start of each source file to most effectively
convey the exclusion of warranty; and each file should have at least
the "copyright" line and a pointer to where the full notice is found.
ONE LINE TO GIVE THE PROGRAM'S NAME AND AN IDEA OF WHAT IT DOES.
Copyright (C) 19YY NAME OF AUTHOR
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License
as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2
of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
GNU General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
Foundation, Inc., 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
Also add information on how to contact you by electronic and paper
mail.
If the program is interactive, make it output a short notice like
this when it starts in an interactive mode:
Gnomovision version 69, Copyright (C) 19YY NAME OF AUTHOR
Gnomovision comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY; for details
type `show w'. This is free software, and you are welcome
to redistribute it under certain conditions; type `show c'
for details.
The hypothetical commands `show w' and `show c' should show the
appropriate parts of the General Public License. Of course, the
commands you use may be called something other than `show w' and `show
c'; they could even be mouse-clicks or menu items--whatever suits your
program.
You should also get your employer (if you work as a programmer) or
your school, if any, to sign a "copyright disclaimer" for the program,
if necessary. Here is a sample; alter the names:
Yoyodyne, Inc., hereby disclaims all copyright
interest in the program `Gnomovision'
(which makes passes at compilers) written
by James Hacker.
SIGNATURE OF TY COON, 1 April 1989
Ty Coon, President of Vice
This General Public License does not permit incorporating your
program into proprietary programs. If your program is a subroutine
library, you may consider it more useful to permit linking proprietary
applications with the library. If this is what you want to do, use the
GNU Library General Public License instead of this License.
File: wdiff.info, Node: Overview, Next: Invoking wdiff, Prev: Copying, Up: Top
Overview
********
The program `wdiff' is a front end to `diff' for comparing files on
a word per word basis. A word is anything between whitespace. This is
useful for comparing two texts in which a few words have been changed
and for which paragraphs have been refilled. It works by creating two
temporary files, one word per line, and then executes `diff' on these
files. It collects the `diff' output and uses it to produce a nicer
display of word differences between the original files.
Ideally, `wdiff' should avoid calling `diff' and do all the work
internally, allowing it to be faster and more polished. However, I
loathe replicating the `diff' algorithm and development effort, instead
of improving `diff' itself. It would be more sensible to integrate
`wdiff' into `diff' than the other way around. I did it this way only
because I had a sudden and urgent need for it, and it would have taken
too much time to integrate it correctly into GNU `diff'. Your advice
or opinions about this are welcome.
`wdiff' was written by Francois Pinard. Please report bugs to
`bug-gnu-utils@prep.ai.mit.edu'. Include the version number, which you
can find by running `wdiff --version'. Include in your message
sufficient input to reproduce the problem and also, the output you
expected.
File: wdiff.info, Node: Invoking wdiff, Next: Examples, Prev: Overview, Up: Top
Invoking `wdiff'
****************
The format for running the `wdiff' program is:
wdiff OPTION ... OLD_FILE NEW_FILE
`wdiff' compares files OLD_FILE and NEW_FILE and produces an
annotated copy of NEW_FILE on standard output. `wdiff' will exit with a
status of 0 if no differences were found, a status of 1 if any
differences were found, or a status of 2 for any error.
In this documentation, "deleted text" refers to text in OLD_FILE
which is not in NEW_FILE, while "inserted text" refers to text on
NEW_FILE which is not in OLD_FILE.
`wdiff' supports the following command line options:
`--help'
Print an informative help message describing the options.
`--version'
Print the version number of `wdiff' on the standard error output.
`--no-deleted'
Avoid producing deleted words on the output. If neither `-1' or
`-2' is selected, the original right margin may be exceeded for
some lines.
`--no-inserted'
Avoid producing inserted words on the output. When this flag is
given, the whitespace in the output is taken from OLD_FILE instead
of NEW_FILE. If neither `-1' or `-2' is selected, the original
right margin may be exceeded for some lines.
`--no-common'
Avoid producing common words on the output. When this option is
not selected, common words and whitespace are taken from NEW_FILE,
unless option `-2' is given, in which case common words and
whitespace are rather taken from OLD_FILE. When selected,
differences are separated from one another by lines of dashes.
Moreover, if this option is selected at the same time as `-1' or
`-2', then none of the output will have any emphasis, i.e. no bold
or underlining. Finally, if this option is not selected, but both
`-1' and `-2' are, then sections of common words between
differences are segregated by lines of dashes.
`--statistics'
On completion, for each file, the total number of words, the
number of common words between the files, the number of words
deleted or inserted and the number of words that have changed is
output. (A changed word is one that has been replaced or is part
of a replacement.) Except for the total number of words, all of
the numbers are followed by a percentage relative to the total
number of words in the file.
`--auto-pager'
Some initiatives which were previously automatically taken in
previous versions of `wdiff' are now put under the control of this
option. By using it, a pager is interposed whenever the `wdiff'
output is directed to the user's terminal. Without this option,
no pager will be called, the user is then responsible for
explicitly piping `wdiff' output into a pager, if required.
The pager is selected by the value of the `PAGER' environment
variable when `wdiff' is run. If `PAGER' is not defined at run
time, then a default pager, selected at installation time, will be
used instead. A defined but empty value of `PAGER' means no pager
at all.
When a pager is interposed through the use of this option, one of
the options `-l' or `-t' is also selected, depending on whether
the string `less' appears in the pager's name or not.
It is often useful to define `wdiff' as an alias for `wdiff -a'.
However, this *hides* the normal `wdiff' behaviour. The default
behaviour may be restored simply by piping the output from `wdiff'
through `cat'. This dissociates the output from the user's
terminal.
`--printer'
Use over-striking to emphasize parts of the output. Each
character of the deleted text is underlined by writing an
underscore `_' first, then a backspace and then the letter to be
underlined. Each character of the inserted text is emboldened by
writing it twice, with a backspace in between. This option is not
selected by default.
`--less-mode'
Use over-striking to emphasize parts of output. This option works
as option `-p', but also over-strikes whitespace associated with
inserted text. `less' shows such whitespace using reverse video.
This option is not selected by default. However, it is
automatically turned on whenever `wdiff' launches the pager
`less'. See option `-a'.
This option is commonly used in conjunction with `less':
wdiff -l OLD_FILE NEW_FILE | less
`--terminal'
Force the production of `termcap' strings for emphasising parts of
output, even if the standard output is not associated with a
terminal. The `TERM' environment variable must contain the name of
a valid `termcap' entry. If the terminal description permits,
underlining is used for marking deleted text, while bold or
reverse video is used for marking inserted text. This option is
not selected by default. However, it is automatically turned on
whenever `wdiff' launches a pager, and it is known that the pager
is *not* `less'. See option `-a'.
This option is commonly used when `wdiff' output is not redirected,
but sent directly to the user terminal, as in:
wdiff -t OLD_FILE NEW_FILE
A common kludge uses `wdiff' together with the pager `more', as in:
wdiff -t OLD_FILE NEW_FILE | more
However, some versions of `more' use `termcap' emphasis for their
own purposes, so strange interactions are possible.
`--start-delete ARGUMENT'
`-w ARGUMENT'
Use ARGUMENT as the "start delete" string. This string will be
output prior to any sequence of deleted text, to mark where it
starts. By default, no start delete string is used unless there
is no other means of distinguishing where such text starts; in
this case the default start delete string is `[-'.
`--end-delete ARGUMENT'
`-x ARGUMENT'
Use ARGUMENT as the "end delete" string. This string will be
output after any sequence of deleted text, to mark where it ends.
By default, no end delete string is used unless there is no other
means of distinguishing where such text ends; in this case the
default end delete string is `-]'.
`--start-insert ARGUMENT'
`-y ARGUMENT'
Use ARGUMENT as the "start insert" string. This string will be
output prior to any sequence of inserted text, to mark where it
starts. By default, no start insert string is used unless there
is no other means of distinguishing where such text starts; in
this case the default start insert string is `{+'.
`--end-insert ARGUMENT'
`-z ARGUMENT'
Use ARGUMENT as the "end insert" string. This string will be
output after any sequence of inserted text, to mark where it ends.
By default, no end insert string is used unless there is no other
means of distinguishing where such text ends; in this case the
default end insert string is `+}'.
`--avoid-wraps'
Avoid spanning the end of line while showing deleted or inserted
text. Any single fragment of deleted or inserted text spanning
many lines will be considered as being made up of many smaller
fragments not containing a newline. So deleted text, for example,
will have an end delete string at the end of each line, just
before the new line, and a start delete string at the beginning of
the next line. A long paragraph of inserted text will have each
line bracketed between start insert and end insert strings. This
behaviour is not selected by default.
Note that options `-p', `-t', and `-[wxyz]' are not mutually
exclusive. If you use a combination of them, you will merely
accumulate the effect of each. Option `-l' is a variant of option `-p'.
File: wdiff.info, Node: Examples, Prev: Invoking wdiff, Up: Top
Actual examples of `wdiff' usage
********************************
This section presents a few examples of usage, most of them have been
contributed by `wdiff' users.
* Change bars example.
This example comes from a discussion with Joe Wells,
`jbw@cs.bu.edu'.
The following command produces a copy of NEW_FILE, shifted right
one space to accommodate change bars since the last revision,
ignoring those changes coming only from paragraph refilling. Any
line with new or changed text will get a `|' in column 1.
However, deleted text is not shown nor marked.
wdiff -1n OLD_FILE NEW_FILE |
sed -e 's/^/ /;/{+/s/^ /|/;s/{+//g;s/+}//g'
Here is how it works. Word differences are found, paying
attention only to additions, as requested by option `-1'. For
bigger changes which span line boundaries, the insert bracket
strings are repeated on each output line, as requested by option
`-n'. This output is then reformatted with a `sed' script which
shifts the text right two columns, turns the initial space into a
bar only if there is some new text on that line, then removes all
insert bracket strings.
* `LaTeX' example.
This example has been provided by Steve Fisk,
`fisk@polar.bowdoin.edu'.
The following uses LaTeX to put deleted text in boxes, and new text
in double boxes:
wdiff -w "\fbox{" -x "}" -y "\fbox{\fbox{" -z "}}" ...
works nicely.
* `troff' example.
This example comes from Paul Fox, `pgf@cayman.com'.
Using `wdiff', with some `troff'-specific delimiters gives *much*
better output. The delimiters I used:
wdiff -w'\s-5' -x'\s0' -y'\fB' -z'\fP' ...
This makes the pointsize of deletions 5 points smaller than
normal, and emboldens insertions. Fantastic!
I experimented with:
wdiff -w'\fI' -x'\fP' -y'\fB' -z'\fP'
since that's more like the defaults you use for
terminals/printers, but since I actually use italics for emphasis
in my documents, I thought the point size thing was clearer.
I tried it on code, and it works surprisingly well there, too...
Tag Table:
Node: Top
Node: Copying
Node: Overview
20645
Node: Invoking wdiff
22032
Node: Examples
29912
End Tag Table