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The diff3
command compares three files and outputs descriptions
of their differences. Its arguments are as follows:
diff3 options... mine older yours
The files to compare are mine, older, and yours.
At most one of these three file names may be `-',
which tells diff3
to read the standard input for that file.
An exit status of 0 means diff3
was successful, 1 means some
conflicts were found, and 2 means trouble.
Below is a summary of all of the options that GNU diff3
accepts. Multiple single letter options (unless they take an argument)
can be combined into a single command line argument.
- `-a'
-
Treat all files as text and compare them line-by-line, even if they
do not appear to be text. See section Binary Files and Forcing Text Comparisons.
- `-A'
-
Incorporate all changes from older to yours into mine,
surrounding all conflicts with bracket lines.
See section Marking Conflicts.
- `-e'
-
Generate an
ed
script that incorporates all the changes from
older to yours into mine. See section Selecting Which Changes to Incorporate.
- `-E'
-
Like `-e', except bracket lines from overlapping changes' first
and third files.
See section Marking Conflicts.
With `-e', an overlapping change looks like this:
<<<<<<< mine
lines from mine
=======
lines from yours
>>>>>>> yours
- `--ed'
-
Generate an
ed
script that incorporates all the changes from
older to yours into mine. See section Selecting Which Changes to Incorporate.
- `--easy-only'
-
Like `-e', except output only the nonoverlapping changes.
See section Selecting Which Changes to Incorporate.
- `-i'
-
Generate `w' and `q' commands at the end of the
ed
script for System V compatibility. This option must be combined with
one of the `-AeExX3' options, and may not be combined with `-m'.
See section Saving the Changed File.
- `--initial-tab'
-
Output a tab rather than two spaces before the text of a line in normal format.
This causes the alignment of tabs in the line to look normal. See section Preserving Tabstop Alignment.
- `-L label'
-
- `--label=label'
-
Use the label label for the brackets output by the `-A',
`-E' and `-X' options. This option may be given up to three
times, one for each input file. The default labels are the names of
the input files. Thus `diff3 -L X -L Y -L Z -m A B C' acts like
`diff3 -m A B C', except that the output looks like it came from
files named `X', `Y' and `Z' rather than from files
named `A', `B' and `C'. See section Marking Conflicts.
- `-m'
-
- `--merge'
-
Apply the edit script to the first file and send the result to standard
output. Unlike piping the output from
diff3
to ed
, this
works even for binary files and incomplete lines. `-A' is assumed
if no edit script option is specified. See section Generating the Merged Output Directly.
- `--overlap-only'
-
Like `-e', except output only the overlapping changes.
See section Selecting Which Changes to Incorporate.
- `--show-all'
-
Incorporate all unmerged changes from older to yours into
mine, surrounding all overlapping changes with bracket lines.
See section Marking Conflicts.
- `--show-overlap'
-
Like `-e', except bracket lines from overlapping changes' first
and third files.
See section Marking Conflicts.
- `-T'
-
Output a tab rather than two spaces before the text of a line in normal format.
This causes the alignment of tabs in the line to look normal. See section Preserving Tabstop Alignment.
- `--text'
-
Treat all files as text and compare them line-by-line, even if they
do not appear to be text. See section Binary Files and Forcing Text Comparisons.
- `-v'
-
- `--version'
-
Output the version number of
diff3
.
- `-x'
-
Like `-e', except output only the overlapping changes.
See section Selecting Which Changes to Incorporate.
- `-X'
-
Like `-E', except output only the overlapping changes.
In other words, like `-x', except bracket changes as in `-E'.
See section Marking Conflicts.
- `-3'
-
Like `-e', except output only the nonoverlapping changes.
See section Selecting Which Changes to Incorporate.
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