Hi:
I have Slackware 12.0 installed on my machine. Is there a more friendly cli program than the diff command for comparring two text files? I understand that diff is mainly to make patches. I ask in this subforum because it may be I have one in my distribution disks and don't know it.

sdiff and vimdiff are both nice (I prefer vimdiff but I already use vim). I also prefer `diff -u` to `diff` for whatever reason...it's just easier to read. comm is useful for making comparisons as well, though it serves a different purpose. There's also mcdiff for an ncurses-based diff.

[edit] mcdiff may not exist in Slackware 12.0; sorry about that. [/edit]

3 members found this post helpful.

Most of the time I use 'diff -urN' but for comparison 'diff --width=$COLUMNS --side-by-side <(nl /some/file.orig) <(nl /some/file)|less' comes in handy. Maybe it's just me but I never felt I needed something else. What does "friendly" actually mean here? What exactly are you looking for?

There's colordiff, although I rarely remember to call it instead of plain diff. There's also the graphical kdiff3, but I never got used to it either.

Thank you so much T3slider. I'll look for them with
grep -irl <prog_name> /var/log/packages.

@unSpawn:
Most of the time I use 'diff -urN' but for comparison 'diff --width=$COLUMNS --side-by-side <(nl /some/file.orig) <(nl /some/file)|less' comes in handy. Maybe it's just me but I never felt I needed something else. What does "friendly" actually mean here? What exactly are you looking for?

I do not know how to express myself concisely. So, here you are: I had a little program, by name dbEdit, and I used to run it under MS-DOS 5.00. If two texts had few differences (two text files), I loaded both files into dbEdit (two buffers) and then, with a single stroke at a key ('n') I flipped back and forth between them. In the presence of the slightest difference between two screenfuls, you could tell at once.

This was really handy for me when the newer version of a program did not work. Friendly was perhaps not the appropriate word to use, because there is documentation in the form of an info file which is almost a tutorial. The truth is I am always saying: "it's imperative to learn diff", and I never find time to do it. But that its main purpose is the patch related stuff is true, is it not?

As to diff in itself, if you only tell me what's the meaning of the line consisting of three dashes when you use diff without any options, it will greatly enhance my understanding of the output, for I do not find it explained anywhere.

Another thing: is nl an external command or a builtin one? I do not seem to have it. Thanks for your reply. And thank you Richard Cranium too.

T3slider, this is manna from Heaven. I never knew I had these things!

If you're into the KDE desktop environment, try the kompare command. It's like the kdiff3 mentioned above, but - for my needs and taste - much easier to use.

On the other hand, if you're into non-windowed systems, emacs has been doing compares, merges, etc., for the last fifty years or so. Among other things.

1 members found this post helpful.

(Hangs head in shame)

I should have written that. Well done!

Yes - I know you said a CLI program, but even so, I have to mention a GUI program called 'diffuse', which is python-based, and I see it's recently arrived in slackbuilds. As a professional programmer of some 30+ years, I have to say that I find this one of the easiest to use.

Hi All,

I use diff from the command line a lot, but occasionally I like to use xxdiff which presents a very nice side-by-side view of the two files. I don't have any prejudice against a GUI application if it works well.

Exeunt

Slackware user since 1995

Git can do a diff (with various output options). The files being compared don't even need to under revision control. Refer to the git-diff manpage for more information.