tldr/pages/common/diff.md

diff

Compare files and directories. More information: https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man1/diff.1.html.

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

diff {{old_file}} {{new_file}}

• Compare files, ignoring white spaces:

diff -w {{old_file}} {{new_file}}

• Compare files, showing the differences side by side:

diff -y {{old_file}} {{new_file}}

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

diff -u {{old_file}} {{new_file}}

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

diff -r {{old_directory}} {{new_directory}}

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

diff -rq {{old_directory}} {{new_directory}}