diff Command Examples

Compare files and directories. More information: https://manned.org/diff.

• Compare files (lists changes to turn old_file into new_file):

diff {{old_file}} {{new_file}}

• Compare files, ignoring white spaces:

diff {{[-w|--ignore-all-space]}} {{old_file}} {{new_file}}

• Compare files, showing the differences side by side:

diff {{[-y|--side-by-side]}} {{old_file}} {{new_file}}

• Compare files, showing the differences in unified format (as used by git diff):

diff {{[-u|--unified]}} {{old_file}} {{new_file}}

• Compare directories recursively (shows names for differing files/directories as well as changes made to files):

diff {{[-r|--recursive]}} {{old_directory}} {{new_directory}}

• Compare directories, only showing the names of files that differ:

diff {{[-r|--recursive]}} {{[-q|--brief]}} {{old_directory}} {{new_directory}}

• Create a patch file for Git from the differences of two text files, treating nonexistent files as empty:

diff {{[-a|--text]}} {{[-u|--unified]}} {{[-N|--new-file]}} {{old_file}} {{new_file}} > {{diff.patch}}

• Compare files, showing output in color and try hard to find smaller set of changes:

diff {{[-d|--minimal]}} --color=always {{old_file}} {{new_file}}