diff

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