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Sysadmin List of file comparison tools

Discussion in 'System Administration' started by eva2000, Jul 18, 2016.

  1. eva2000

    eva2000 Administrator Staff Member

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    Another useful article 9 Best File Comparison and Difference (Diff) Tools for Linux

    strange they left out sdiff tool which i use mainly for linux SSH command line


    example side by side of similarities & differences
    Code (Text):
    sdiff a.txt b.txt
    one                                                             one
    abc                                                           | efg
    123                                                           | 456
    

    only show differences
    Code (Text):
    sdiff -s a.txt b.txt
    abc                                                           | efg
    123                                                           | 456


    Code (Text):
    sdiff --help
    Usage: sdiff [OPTION]... FILE1 FILE2
    Side-by-side merge of differences between FILE1 and FILE2.
    
    Mandatory arguments to long options are mandatory for short options too.
      -o, --output=FILE            operate interactively, sending output to FILE
    
      -i, --ignore-case            consider upper- and lower-case to be the same
      -E, --ignore-tab-expansion   ignore changes due to tab expansion
      -Z, --ignore-trailing-space  ignore white space at line end
      -b, --ignore-space-change    ignore changes in the amount of white space
      -W, --ignore-all-space       ignore all white space
      -B, --ignore-blank-lines     ignore changes whose lines are all blank
      -I, --ignore-matching-lines=RE  ignore changes all whose lines match RE
          --strip-trailing-cr      strip trailing carriage return on input
      -a, --text                   treat all files as text
    
      -w, --width=NUM              output at most NUM (default 130) print columns
      -l, --left-column            output only the left column of common lines
      -s, --suppress-common-lines  do not output common lines
    
      -t, --expand-tabs            expand tabs to spaces in output
          --tabsize=NUM            tab stops at every NUM (default 8) print columns
    
      -d, --minimal                try hard to find a smaller set of changes
      -H, --speed-large-files      assume large files, many scattered small changes
          --diff-program=PROGRAM   use PROGRAM to compare files
    
          --help                   display this help and exit
      -v, --version                output version information and exit
    
    If a FILE is '-', read standard input.
    Exit status is 0 if inputs are the same, 1 if different, 2 if trouble.
    
    Report bugs to: bug-diffutils@gnu.org
    GNU diffutils home page: <http://www.gnu.org/software/diffutils/>
    General help using GNU software: <http://www.gnu.org/gethelp/>
     
  2. eva2000

    eva2000 Administrator Staff Member

    54,606
    12,225
    113
    May 24, 2014
    Brisbane, Australia
    Ratings:
    +18,794
    Local Time:
    10:53 AM
    Nginx 1.27.x
    MariaDB 10.x/11.4+