14.1 Options to diff3
Below is a summary of all of the options that GNU diff3
accepts. Multiple single letter options (unless they take an argument)
can be combined into a single command line argument.
- -a
- --text
- Treat all files as text and compare them line-by-line, even if they
do not appear to be text. See Binary.
- -A
- --show-all
- Incorporate all unmerged changes from older to yours into
mine, surrounding conflicts with bracket lines.
See Marking Conflicts.
- --diff-program=program
- Use the compatible comparison program program to compare files
instead of diff.
- -e
- --ed
- Generate an ed script that incorporates all the changes from
older to yours into mine. See Which Changes.
- -E
- --show-overlap
- Like -e, except bracket lines from overlapping changes' first
and third files.
See Marking Conflicts.
With -E, an overlapping change looks like this:
<<<<<<< mine
lines from mine
=======
lines from yours
>>>>>>> yours
- --help
- Output a summary of usage and then exit.
- -i
- Generate ‘w’ and ‘q’ commands at the end of the ed
script for System V compatibility. This option must be combined with
one of the -AeExX3 options, and may not be combined with -m.
See Saving the Changed File.
- --label=label
- Use the label label for the brackets output by the -A,
-E and -X options. This option may be given up to three
times, one for each input file. The default labels are the names of
the input files. Thus ‘diff3 --label X --label Y --label Z -m A
B C’ acts like
‘diff3 -m A B C’, except that the output looks like it came from
files named ‘X’, ‘Y’ and ‘Z’ rather than from files
named ‘A’, ‘B’ and ‘C’. See Marking Conflicts.
- -m
- --merge
- Apply the edit script to the first file and send the result to standard
output. Unlike piping the output from diff3 to ed, this
works even for binary files and incomplete lines. -A is assumed
if no edit script option is specified. See Bypassing ed.
- --strip-trailing-cr
- Strip any trailing carriage return at the end of an input line.
See Binary.
- -T
- --initial-tab
- Output a tab rather than two spaces before the text of a line in normal format.
This causes the alignment of tabs in the line to look normal. See Tabs.
- -v
- --version
- Output version information and then exit.
- -x
- --overlap-only
- Like -e, except output only the overlapping changes.
See Which Changes.
- -X
- Like -E, except output only the overlapping changes.
In other words, like -x, except bracket changes as in -E.
See Marking Conflicts.
- -3
- --easy-only
- Like -e, except output only the nonoverlapping changes.
See Which Changes.