DIFF3

Section: GNU Tools (1)
Updated: 22sep1993
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NAME

diff3 - find differences between three files  

SYNOPSIS

diff3 [options] mine older yours  

DESCRIPTION

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

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.
 

SEE ALSO

cmp(1), comm(1), diff(1), ed(1), patch(1), sdiff(1).  

DIAGNOSTICS

An exit status of 0 means diff3 was successful, 1 means some conflicts were found, and 2 means trouble.