sdiff(1) [netbsd man page]
SDIFF(1) BSD General Commands Manual SDIFF(1) NAME
sdiff -- side-by-side diff SYNOPSIS
sdiff [-abdilstW] [-I regexp] [-o outfile] [-w width] file1 file2 DESCRIPTION
sdiff displays two files side by side, with any differences between the two highlighted as follows: new lines are marked with '>'; deleted lines are marked with '<'; and changed lines are marked with '|'. sdiff can also be used to interactively merge two files, prompting at each set of differences. See the -o option for an explanation. The options are: -l Only print the left column for identical lines. -o outfile Interactively merge file1 and file2 into outfile. In this mode, the user is prompted for each set of differences. See EDITOR and VISUAL, below, for details of which editor, if any, is invoked. The commands are as follows: l Choose left set of diffs. r Choose right set of diffs. s Silent mode - identical lines are not printed. v Verbose mode - identical lines are printed. e Start editing an empty file, which will be merged into outfile upon exiting the editor. e l Start editing file with left set of diffs. e r Start editing file with right set of diffs. e b Start editing file with both sets of diffs. q Quit sdiff. -s Skip identical lines. -w width Print a maximum of width characters on each line. The default is 130 characters. Options passed to diff(1) are: -a Treat file1 and file2 as text files. -b Ignore trailing blank spaces. -d Minimize diff size. -I regexp Ignore line changes matching regexp. All lines in the change must match regexp for the change to be ignored. -i Do a case-insensitive comparison. -t Expand tabs to spaces. -W Ignore all spaces (the -w flag is passed to diff(1)). ENVIRONMENT
EDITOR, VISUAL Specifies an editor to use with the -o option. If both EDITOR and VISUAL are set, VISUAL takes precedence. If neither EDITOR nor VISUAL are set, the default is vi(1). TMPDIR Specifies a directory for temporary files to be created. The default is /tmp. SEE ALSO
diff(1), diff3(1), vi(1), re_format(7) AUTHORS
sdiff was written from scratch for the public domain by Ray Lai <ray@cyth.net>. CAVEATS
Although undocumented, sdiff supports all options supported by GNU sdiff. Some options require GNU diff. Tabs are treated as anywhere from one to eight characters wide, depending on the current column. Terminals that treat tabs as eight charac- ters wide will look best. BUGS
sdiff may not work with binary data. BSD
February 21, 2007 BSD
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sdiff(1) General Commands Manual sdiff(1) NAME
sdiff - Compares two files and displays the differences in a side-by-side format SYNOPSIS
sdiff [-l | -s] [-w number] [-o output_file] file1 file2 The sdiff command reads file1 and file2, uses diff to compare them, and writes the results to standard output in a side-by-side format. OPTIONS
Displays only the left side when lines are identical. Creates a third file, output_file, by a controlled interactive line-by-line merging of file1 and file2. The following subcommands govern the creation of this file: Adds the left side to output_file. Adds the right side to output_file. Stops displaying identical lines. Begins displaying identical lines. Enters ed with the left side, the right side, both sides, or an empty file, respectively. Each time you exit from ed, sdiff writes the resulting edited file to the end of output_file. If you fail to save the changes before exiting, sdiff writes the initial input to output_file. Exits the interactive session. Suppresses display of identical lines. Sets the width of the output line to number (130 characters by default). DESCRIPTION
The sdiff command displays each line of the two files with a series of spaces between them if the lines are identical, a < (left angle bracket) in the field of spaces if the line only exists in file1, a > (right angle bracket) if the line only exists in file2, and a | (ver- tical bar) for lines that are different. When you specify the -o option, sdiff produces a third file by merging file1 and file2 according to your instructions. Note that the sdiff command invokes the diff -b command to compare two input files. The -b option causes the diff command to ignore trail- ing spaces, tab characters, and consider other strings of spaces as equal. EXAMPLES
To print a comparison of two files, enter: sdiff chap1.bak chap1 This displays a side-by-side listing that compares each line of chap1.bak and chap1. To display only the lines that differ, enter: sdiff -s -w 80 chap1.bak chap1 This displays the differences at the tty. The -w 80 sets page width to 80 columns. The -s option tells sdiff not to display lines that are identical in both files. To selectively combine parts of two files, enter: sdiff -s -w 80 -o chap1.combo chap1.bak chap1 This combines chap1.bak and chap1 into a new file called chap1.combo. For each group of differing lines, sdiff asks you which group to keep or whether you want to edit them using ed. SEE ALSO
Commands: diff(1), ed(1) sdiff(1)