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diff3

DIFF3(1)                           GNU Tools                          DIFF3(1)



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.   Mul-
       tiple  single letter options (unless they take an argument) can be com-
       bined 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, surround-
              ing 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.



GNU Tools                          22sep1993                          DIFF3(1)