Hack #18 -> Diff Command
Diff command compares two different files and reports the difference.
The output of the diff command is very cryptic and not straight forward
to read.
Syntax: diff [options] file1 file2
What was modified in my new file when compare to my old
file?
The option -w in the diff command will ignore the white space while
performing the comparison.
In the following diff output:
- The lines above —, indicates the changes happened in first file in
the diff command (i.e name_list.txt).
- The lines below —, indicates the changes happened to the
second file in the diff command (i.e name_list_new.txt). The lines
that belong to the first file starts with < and the lines of second
file starts with >.
# diff -w name_list.txt name_list_new.txt
2c2,3
< John Doe
—
> John M Doe
> Jason Bourne