1COLORDIFF(1)                     User Commands                    COLORDIFF(1)
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NAME

6       colordiff - a tool to colorize diff output
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SYNOPSIS

9       colordiff [diff options] [colordiff options] {file1} {file2}
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DESCRIPTION

12       colordiff is a wrapper for diff and produces the same output as diff
13       but with coloured syntax highlighting at the command line to improve
14       readability. The output is similar to how a diff-generated patch might
15       appear in Vim or Emacs with the appropriate syntax highlighting options
16       enabled. The colour schemes can be read from a central configuration
17       file or from a local user ~/.colordiffrc file.
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19       colordiff makes use of ANSI colours and as such will only work when
20       ANSI colours can be used - typical examples are xterms and Eterms, as
21       well as console sessions.
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23       colordiff has been tested on various flavours of Linux and under
24       OpenBSD, but should be broadly portable to other systems.
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USAGE

27       Use colordiff wherever you would normally use diff, or instead pipe
28       output to colordiff:
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30       For example:
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32           $ colordiff file1 file2
33           $ diff -u file1 file2 | colordiff
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35       You can pipe the output to 'less', using the '-R' option (some systems
36       or terminal types may get better results using '-r' instead), which
37       keeps the colour escape sequences, otherwise displayed incorrectly or
38       discarded by 'less':
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40           $ diff -u file1 file2 | colordiff | less -R
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42       If you want to force disable colour escape sequences (for example pipe
43       the output to patch), you can use option '--color=no' to do so:
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45           $ diff -u file1 file2 | colordiff --color=no | patch -p0 -d another-working-dir
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47       If you have wdiff installed, colordiff will correctly colourise the
48       added and removed text, provided that the '-n' option is given to
49       wdiff:
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51           $ wdiff -n file1 file2 | colordiff
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53       You may find it useful to make diff automatically call colordiff. Add
54       the following line to ~/.bashrc (or equivalent):
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56           alias diff=colordiff
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58       Any options passed to colordiff are passed through to diff except for
59       the colordiff-specific option 'difftype', e.g.
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61           colordiff --difftype=debdiff file1 file2
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63       Valid values for 'difftype' are: diff, diffc, diffu, diffy, wdiff,
64       debdiff; these correspond to plain diffs, context diffs, unified diffs,
65       side-by-side diffs, wdiff output and debdiff output respectively. Use
66       these overrides when colordiff is not able to determine the diff-type
67       automatically.
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69       Alternatively, a construct such as 'cvs diff SOMETHING | colordiff' can
70       be included in ~/.bashrc as follows:
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72           function cvsdiff () { cvs diff $@ | colordiff; }
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74       Or, combining the idea above using 'less':
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76           function cvsdiff () { cvs diff $@ | colordiff |less -R; }
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78       Note that the function name, cvsdiff, can be customized.
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80       By default colordiff returns the exit code of the underlying diff
81       invocation (if there is one), but there are some circumstances where it
82       is useful to force colordiff's exit code to be zero: to do this use the
83       option '--fakeexitcode':
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85           colordiff --fakeexitcode ...
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FILES

89       /etc/colordiffrc
90           Central configuration file. User-specific settings can be enabled
91           by copying this file to ~/.colordiffrc and making the appropriate
92           changes.
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94       colordiffrc-lightbg
95           Alternate configuration template for use with terminals having
96           light backgrounds. Copy this to /etc/colordiffrc or ~/.colordiffrc
97           and customize.
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99       colordiffrc-gitdiff
100           Alternate configuration template for use with terminals having dark
101           backgrounds, with colour defaults set to match the output of 'git
102           diff'. Copy this to /etc/colordiffrc or ~/.colordiffrc and
103           customize.
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BUGS

106       Bug reports and suggestions/patches to davee@sungate.co.uk please.
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AUTHORS

109       Dave Ewart
110           colordiff author and Debian packager
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112       Graham Wilson
113           Manual page and XML source author
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115       Colin Tuckley
116           Debian package sponsor
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120colordiff                         05/21/2015                      COLORDIFF(1)
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