16. Invoking `sdiff`

The sdiff command merges two files and interactively outputs the results. Its arguments are as follows:

sdiff -o outfile options… from-file to-file

This merges from-file with to-file, with output to outfile. If from-file is a directory and to-file is not, sdiff compares the file in from-file whose file name is that of to-file, and vice versa. from-file and to-file may not both be directories.

sdiff options begin with ‘-’, so normally from-file and to-file may not begin with ‘-’. However, ‘--’ as an argument by itself treats the remaining arguments as file names even if they begin with ‘-’. You may not use ‘-’ as an input file.

sdiff without ‘--output’ (‘-o’) produces a side-by-side difference. This usage is obsolete; use the ‘--side-by-side’ (‘-y’) option of diff instead.

An exit status of 0 means no differences were found, 1 means some differences were found, and 2 means trouble.

[ < ]

[ > ]

[ << ]

[ Up ]

[ >> ]

[Top]

[Contents]

[Index]

[ ? ]

16.1 Options to `sdiff`

Below is a summary of all of the options that GNU sdiff accepts. Each option has two equivalent names, one of which is a single letter preceded by ‘-’, and the other of which is a long name preceded by ‘--’. Multiple single letter options (unless they take an argument) can be combined into a single command line argument. Long named options can be abbreviated to any unique prefix of their name.

‘-a’
‘--text’: Treat all files as text and compare them line-by-line, even if they do not appear to be text. See section Binary Files and Forcing Text Comparisons.
‘-b’
‘--ignore-space-change’: Ignore changes in amount of white space. See section Suppressing Differences in Blank and Tab Spacing.
‘-B’
‘--ignore-blank-lines’: Ignore changes that just insert or delete blank lines. See section Suppressing Differences Whose Lines Are All Blank.
‘-d’
‘--minimal’: Change the algorithm to perhaps find a smaller set of changes. This makes sdiff slower (sometimes much slower). See section diff Performance Tradeoffs.
‘--diff-program=program’: Use the compatible comparison program program to compare files instead of diff.
‘-E’
‘--ignore-tab-expansion’: Ignore changes due to tab expansion. See section Suppressing Differences in Blank and Tab Spacing.
‘--help’: Output a summary of usage and then exit.
‘-i’
‘--ignore-case’: Ignore changes in case; consider upper- and lower-case to be the same. See section Suppressing Case Differences.
‘-I regexp’
‘--ignore-matching-lines=regexp’: Ignore changes that just insert or delete lines that match regexp. See section Suppressing Differences Whose Lines All Match a Regular Expression.
‘-l’
‘--left-column’: Print only the left column of two common lines. See section Controlling Side by Side Format.
‘-o file’
‘--output=file’: Put merged output into file. This option is required for merging.
‘-s’
‘--suppress-common-lines’: Do not print common lines. See section Controlling Side by Side Format.
‘--speed-large-files’: Use heuristics to speed handling of large files that have numerous scattered small changes. See section diff Performance Tradeoffs.
‘--strip-trailing-cr’: Strip any trailing carriage return at the end of an input line. See section Binary Files and Forcing Text Comparisons.
‘-t’
‘--expand-tabs’: Expand tabs to spaces in the output, to preserve the alignment of tabs in the input files. See section Preserving Tab Stop Alignment.
‘--tabsize=columns’: Assume that tab stops are set every columns (default 8) print columns. See section Preserving Tab Stop Alignment.
‘-v’
‘--version’: Output version information and then exit.
‘-w columns’
‘--width=columns’: Output at most columns (default 130) print columns per line. See section Controlling Side by Side Format. Note that for historical reasons, this option is ‘-W’ in diff, ‘-w’ in sdiff.
‘-W’
‘--ignore-all-space’: Ignore white space when comparing lines. See section Suppressing Differences in Blank and Tab Spacing. Note that for historical reasons, this option is ‘-w’ in diff, ‘-W’ in sdiff.
‘-Z’
‘--ignore-trailing-space’: Ignore white space at line end. See section Suppressing Differences in Blank and Tab Spacing.