1.0 KiB
1.0 KiB
Comparing the content of two files or directories
diff
is a command line utility used to compare two files or directories
Compare files
To compare the content of two files use something like
diff file1.txt file2.txt
You can redirect the output to a file and make a patch: a file containing the differences between both files
diff file1.txt file2.txt > patch.txt
Comparing directories
Some arguments may be hepful to have an output showing the differences between two directories:
--brief
(show only the differences) and-r
(compare the directories that are located within the main directory also)
diff --brief -r directory1 directory2
Another approach to compare all the files within each directory is to use:
q
: Shows only differencesr
: Run the command recursively
diff -qr directory1 directory2