SDIFF(1) FreeBSD General Commands Manual SDIFF(1)
NAME
sdiff - side-by-side diff
SYNOPSIS
sdiff [-abdilstW] [-I regexp] [-o outfile] [-w width] file1 file2
DESCRIPTION
sdiff displays two files side by side, with any differences between the
two highlighted as follows: new lines are marked with `>'; deleted lines
are marked with `<'; and changed lines are marked with `|'.
sdiff can also be used to interactively merge two files, prompting at
each set of differences. See the -o option for an explanation.
The options are:
-l Only print the left column for identical lines.
-o outfile
Interactively merge file1 and file2 into outfile. In this mode,
the user is prompted for each set of differences. See EDITOR and
VISUAL, below, for details of which editor, if any, is invoked.
The commands are as follows:
l | 1 Choose left set of diffs.
r | 2 Choose right set of diffs.
b l | b 1
Choose both, left set of diffs first.
b r | b 2
Choose both, right set of diffs first.
s Silent mode - identical lines are not printed.
v Verbose mode - identical lines are printed.
e Start editing an empty file, which will be merged into
outfile upon exiting the editor.
e l Start editing file with left set of diffs.
e r Start editing file with right set of diffs.
e b Start editing file with both sets of diffs.
q Quit sdiff.
-s Skip identical lines.
-w width
Print a maximum of width characters on each line. The default is
130 characters.
Options passed to diff(1) are:
-a Treat file1 and file2 as text files.
-b Ignore trailing blank spaces.
-d Minimize diff size.
-I regexp
Ignore line changes matching regexp. All lines in the change
must match regexp for the change to be ignored.
-i Do a case-insensitive comparison.
-t Expand tabs to spaces.
-W Ignore all spaces (the -w flag is passed to diff(1)).
ENVIRONMENT
EDITOR, VISUAL
Specifies an editor to use with the -o option. If both EDITOR
and VISUAL are set, VISUAL takes precedence. If neither EDITOR
nor VISUAL are set, the default is vi(1).
TMPDIR Specifies a directory for temporary files to be created. The
default is /tmp.
EXIT STATUS
The sdiff utility exits with one of the following values:
0 No differences were found.
1 Differences were found.
>1 An error occurred.
SEE ALSO
cmp(1), diff(1), diff3(1), vi(1), re_format(7)
HISTORY
The sdiff command first appeared in AT&T System III UNIX and was
reimplemented for OpenBSD 3.9.
AUTHORS
sdiff was written from scratch for the public domain by Ray Lai
<
[email protected]>.
CAVEATS
Although undocumented, sdiff supports most long options supported by GNU
sdiff, though some require GNU diff.
Tabs are treated as anywhere from one to eight characters wide, depending
on the current column. Terminals that treat tabs as eight characters
wide will look best.
BUGS
sdiff may not work with binary data.
FreeBSD 14.1-RELEASE-p8 February 26, 2025 FreeBSD 14.1-RELEASE-p8