1INTERDIFF(1)                       Man pages                      INTERDIFF(1)
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NAME

6       interdiff - show differences between two diff files
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SYNOPSIS

9       interdiff [[-p n] | [--strip-match=n]] [[-U n] | [--unified=n]]
10                 [[-d PAT] | [--drop-context=PAT]] [[-q] | [--quiet]] [[-z] |
11                 [--decompress]] [[-b] | [--ignore-space-change]] [[-B] |
12                 [--ignore-blank-lines]] [[-i] | [--ignore-case]] [[-w] |
13                 [--ignore-all-space]] [[--interpolate] | [--combine] |
14                 [--flip]] [--no-revert-omitted] diff1 diff2
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16       interdiff {[--help] | [--version]}
17

DESCRIPTION

19       interdiff creates a unified format diff that expresses the difference
20       between two diffs. The diffs must both be relative to the same files.
21       For best results, the diffs must have at least three lines of context.
22
23       To reverse a patch, use /dev/null for diff2.
24
25       To reduce the amount of context in a patch, use:
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27           interdiff -U1 /dev/null patchfile
28
29       Since interdiff doesn´t have the advantage of being able to look at the
30       files that are to be modified, it has stricter requirements on the
31       input format than patch(1) does. The output of GNU diff will be okay,
32       even with extensions, but if you intend to use a hand-edited patch it
33       might be wise to clean up the offsets and counts using recountdiff(1)
34       first.
35
36       Note, however, that the two patches must both be relative to the
37       versions of the same original set of files.
38
39       The diffs may be in context format. The output, however, will be in
40       unified format.
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OPTIONS

43       -h
44           Ignored, for compatibility with older versions of interdiff. This
45           option will go away soon.
46
47       -p n, --strip-match=n
48           When comparing filenames, ignore the first n pathname components
49           from both patches. (This is similar to the -p option to GNU
50           patch(1).)
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52       -q, --quiet
53           Quieter output. Don´t emit rationale lines at the beginning of each
54           patch.
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56       -U n, --unified=n
57           Attempt to display n lines of context (requires at least n lines of
58           context in both input files). (This is similar to the -U option to
59           GNU diff(1).)
60
61       -d PATTERN, --drop-context=PATTERN
62           Don´t display any context on files that match the shell wildcard
63           PATTERN. This option can be given multiple times.
64
65           Note that the interpretation of the shell wildcard pattern does not
66           count slash characters or periods as special (in other words, no
67           flags are given to fnmatch). This is so that “*/basename”-type
68           patterns can be given without limiting the number of pathname
69           components.
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71       -i, --ignore-case
72           Consider upper- and lower-case to be the same.
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74       -w, --ignore-all-space
75           Ignore whitespace changes in patches.
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77       -b, --ignore-space-change
78           Ignore changes in the amount of whitespace.
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80       -B, --ignore-blank-lines
81           Ignore changes whose lines are all blank.
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83       -z, --decompress
84           Decompress files with extensions .gz and .bz2.
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86       --interpolate
87           Run as “interdiff”. This is the default.
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89       --combine
90           Run as “combinediff”. See combinediff(1) for more information about
91           how the behaviour is altered in this mode.
92
93       --no-revert-omitted
94           (For interpolation mode only) When a file is changed by the first
95           patch but not by the second, don´t revert that change.
96
97       --help
98           Display a short usage message.
99
100       --version
101           Display the version number of interdiff.
102

EXAMPLES

104       Basic usage:
105
106           interdiff -z 3.2pre1.patch.gz 3.2pre2.patch.gz
107
108       Reversing a patch:
109
110           interdiff patch /dev/null
111
112       Reversing part of a patch (and ignoring the rest):
113
114           filterdiff -i file.c patchfile | \
115             interdiff /dev/stdin /dev/null
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BUGS

118       There are currently no known bugs in interdiff; but there are some
119       caveats. If you find a bug, please report it (along with a minimal test
120       case) to Tim Waugh twaugh@redhat.com.
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122       There are some sets of patches in which there is just not enough
123       information to produce a proper interdiff. In this case, the strategy
124       employed is to revert the original patch and apply the new patch. This,
125       unfortunately, means that interdiffs are not guaranteed to be
126       reversible.
127

SEE ALSO

129       combinediff(1)
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AUTHORS

132       Tim Waugh <twaugh@redhat.com>
133           Package maintainer
134
135       Michael K. Johnson <johnsonm@redhat.com>
136           Original man page contributor
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140patchutils                       23 June 2009                     INTERDIFF(1)
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