LINUX HACK 27

Hack 27. Diff Command

diff command compares two different files and reports the difference. The output is very cryptic and not straight forward to read.

Syntax:  diff  [options]  file1  file2

What was modified in my new file when compare to my old file?

The option -w in the diff command will ignore the white space while performing the comparison.

In the following diff output:

o    The lines above ---, indicates the changes happened in first file in the diff command (i.e name_list.txt).

o    The lines below ---, indicates the changes happened to the second file in the diff command (i.e name_list_new.txt). The lines that belong to the first file starts with < and the lines of second file starts with >.

#  diff  -w  name_list.txt  name_list_new.txt 

 

2c2,3

<  John  Doe

---

>  John  M  Doe

>  Jason  Bourne