The `diff` command

compare files line by line 8 examples from the lessons of the IVski Linux Playground — try them in the terminal next to them.

Options in the examples

-u, -U NUM, --unified[=NUM]: output NUM (default 3) lines of unified context
-b, --ignore-space-change: ignore changes in the amount of white space
-i, --ignore-case: ignore case differences in file contents
-q, --brief: report only when files differ
-r, --recursive: recursively compare any subdirectories found
-w, --ignore-all-space: ignore all white space

diff ~/compare/app.conf ~/compare/app.conf.new

diff -u ~/compare/app.conf ~/compare/app.conf.new

diff -u ~/compare/app.conf ~/compare/app.conf.new > ~/compare/changes.diff

diff -q ~/compare/app.conf ~/compare/app.conf.new

Files ... differ

diff -r ~/compare/site-v1 ~/compare/site-v2

diff -i a.txt b.txt

upper/lower case

diff -w a.txt b.txt

spaces and tabs

diff -b a.txt b.txt

a different amount of spaces