1DIFF3(1) GNU Tools DIFF3(1)
2
6 diff3 - find differences between three files
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9 diff3 [options] mine older yours
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12 The diff3 command compares three files and outputs descriptions of
13 their differences.
14 The files to compare are mine, older, and yours. At most one of these
16 three file names may be -, which tells diff3 to read the standard input
17 for that file.
18 Options
20 Below is a summary of all of the options that GNU diff3 accepts. Mul‐
21 tiple single letter options (unless they take an argument) can be com‐
22 bined into a single command line argument.
23 -a Treat all files as text and compare them line-by-line, even if
25 they do not appear to be text.
26 -A Incorporate all changes from older to yours into mine, surround‐
28 ing all conflicts with bracket lines.
29 -B Old behavior of -A. Shows non-conflicts.
31 -e Generate an ed script that incorporates all the changes from
33 older to yours into mine.
34 -E Like -e, except bracket lines from overlapping changes' first
36 and third files. With -e, an overlapping change looks like
37 this:
38 <<<<<<< mine
40 lines from mine
41 =======
42 lines from yours
43 >>>>>>> yours
44 --ed Generate an ed script that incorporates all the changes from
46 older to yours into mine.
47 --easy-only
49 Like -e, except output only the nonoverlapping changes.
50 -i Generate w and q commands at the end of the ed script for System
52 V compatibility. This option must be combined with one of the
53 -AeExX3 options, and may not be combined with -m.
54 --initial-tab
56 Output a tab rather than two spaces before the text of a line in
57 normal format. This causes the alignment of tabs in the line to
58 look normal.
59 -L label
61 --label=label
62 Use the label label for the brackets output by the -A, -E and -X
63 options. This option may be given up to three times, one for
64 each input file. The default labels are the names of the input
65 files. Thus diff3 -L X -L Y -L Z -m A B C acts like diff3 -m A
66 B C , except that the output looks like it came from files named
67 X, Y and Z rather than from files named A, B and C.
68 -m
70 --merge
71 Apply the edit script to the first file and send the result to
72 standard output. Unlike piping the output from diff3 to ed,
73 this works even for binary files and incomplete lines. -A is
74 assumed if no edit script option is specified.
75 --overlap-only
77 Like -e, except output only the overlapping changes.
78 --show-all
80 Incorporate all unmerged changes from older to yours into mine,
81 surrounding all overlapping changes with bracket lines.
82 --show-overlap
84 Like -e, except bracket lines from overlapping changes' first
85 and third files.
86 -T Output a tab rather than two spaces before the text of a line in
88 normal format. This causes the alignment of tabs in the line to
89 look normal.
90 --text Treat all files as text and compare them line-by-line, even if
92 they do not appear to be text.
93 -v
95 --version
96 Output the version number of diff3.
97 -x Like -e, except output only the overlapping changes.
99 -X Like -E, except output only the overlapping changes. In other
101 words, like -x, except bracket changes as in -E.
102 -3 Like -e, except output only the nonoverlapping changes.
104
106 cmp(1), comm(1), diff(1), ed(1), patch(1), sdiff(1).
107
109 An exit status of 0 means diff3 was successful, 1 means some conflicts
110 were found, and 2 means trouble.
111GNU Tools 22sep1993 DIFF3(1)