diff & commForum: Other Help Topics Topic: diff & comm started by: clivesay Posted by clivesay on Jan. 15 2005,02:21
bookmarkA while back someone enlightened me to the "diff" command. This allows you to compare the text in two files and output the differences between the two. I used it to build a .dsl with self extracting deb files by taking a snapshot of the filesystem before the extraction and then a snapshot afterwards to view the differences. Example:
This has been a handy utility for many different things. Well, tonight I learned about the opposite command called "comm". This command compares two files and lists the files that are common between the two. This was helpful as I was building a .dsl with gtk2 files and I wanted to purge the files in my new .dsl that already contained files in the gtk2.dsl. Example:
Both of these commands have different options you can see by typing diff --help and comm --help respectively. I hope these help someone. I learn something new every single day. Chris Posted by cbagger01 on Jan. 15 2005,20:36
Hm...I've been a big fan of diff when I was using the VMS operating system. Never knew about comm though. Thanks for the tip. I'm sure it will come in handy someday. Posted by petergunn on Jan. 19 2005,20:21
vimdiff makes it much more obviosu what has changed between the two files over the regular diff...vimdiff <file1> <file2> give it a whirl :-) |