diff3 - find differences between three files
diff3 [options] mine older yours
The diff3 command compares three files and outputs descriptions of
their differences.
The files to compare are mine, older, and yours. At most one of these
three file names may be -, which tells diff3 to read the standard input
for that file.
Options [Toc] [Back]
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 Treat all files as text and compare them line-by-line, even if
they do not appear to be text.
-A Incorporate all changes from older to yours into mine, surrounding
all conflicts with bracket lines.
-B Old behavior of -A. Shows non-conflicts.
-e Generate an ed script that incorporates all the changes from
older to yours into mine.
-E Like -e, except bracket lines from overlapping changes' first
and third files. With -e, an overlapping change looks like
this:
<<<<<<< mine
lines from mine
=======
lines from yours
>>>>>>> yours
--ed Generate an ed script that incorporates all the changes from
older to yours into mine.
--easy-only
Like -e, except output only the nonoverlapping changes.
-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.
--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.
-L label
--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 -L X -L Y -L 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.
-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.
--overlap-only
Like -e, except output only the overlapping changes.
--show-all
Incorporate all unmerged changes from older to yours into mine,
surrounding all overlapping changes with bracket lines.
--show-overlap
Like -e, except bracket lines from overlapping changes' first
and third files.
-T 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.
--text Treat all files as text and compare them line-by-line, even if
they do not appear to be text.
-v
--version
Output the version number of diff3.
-x Like -e, except output only the overlapping changes.
-X Like -E, except output only the overlapping changes. In other
words, like -x, except bracket changes as in -E.
-3 Like -e, except output only the nonoverlapping changes.
cmp(1), comm(1), diff(1), ed(1), patch(1), sdiff(1).
An exit status of 0 means diff3 was successful, 1 means some conflicts
were found, and 2 means trouble.
GNU Tools 22sep1993 DIFF3(1)
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