FreeBSD Man Pages

diff3(1)

NAME

       diff3 - find differences between three files

SYNOPSIS

       diff3 [options] mine older yours

DESCRIPTION

       The  diff3  command  compares  three  files and outputs descriptions of
       their differences.

       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.

   Options
       Below is a summary of all of the options that GNU diff3 accepts.   Mul-
       tiple  single letter options (unless they take an argument) can be com-
       bined 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.

       -A     Incorporate all changes from older to yours into mine, surround-
	      ing all conflicts with bracket lines.

       -B     Old behavior of -A.  Shows non-conflicts.

       -e     Generate an ed script that incorporates  all  the  changes  from
	      older to yours into mine.

       -E     Like  -e,  except  bracket lines from overlapping changes' first
	      and third files.	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.

       --easy-only
	      Like -e, except output only the nonoverlapping changes.

       -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.

       --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.


       -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.

       --overlap-only
	      Like -e, except output only the overlapping changes.

       --show-all
	      Incorporate all unmerged changes from older to yours into  mine,
	      surrounding all overlapping changes with bracket lines.

       --show-overlap
	      Like  -e,  except  bracket lines from overlapping changes' first
	      and third files.

       -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.

       --text Treat all files as text and compare them line-by-line,  even  if
	      they do not appear to be text.

       -v
       --version
	      Output the version number of diff3.

       -x     Like -e, except output only the overlapping changes.

       -X     Like  -E,  except output only the overlapping changes.  In other
	      words, like -x, except bracket changes as in -E.

       -3     Like -e, except output only the nonoverlapping changes.

SEE ALSO

       cmp(1), comm(1), diff(1), ed(1), patch(1), sdiff(1).

DIAGNOSTICS

       An exit status of 0 means diff3 was successful, 1 means some  conflicts
       were found, and 2 means trouble.

GNU Tools			   22sep1993			      DIFF3(1)

SPONSORED LINKS