Comparing and Merging Files with GNU diff and patch

by David MacKenzie, Paul Eggert, and Richard Stallman

This manual describes how to compare and merge files using GNU diff and patch.

It includes an extensive tutorial that guides the reader through all the options of the diff and patch commands. Later chapters cover powerful time-saving techniques such as automatic merging of divergent branches of a source tree.

This is a printed copy of the official GNU diffutils manual. It documents all the diffutils programs (diff, cmp, sdiff, diff3), plus GNU patch. The versions covered are the 2.8 release of GNU diffutils and 2.5 release of patch.

The authors of this manual are the original developers of the GNU diffutils programs.

For each copy of this manual sold, $1 is donated to the Free Software Foundation.

As of January 2010 the total amount donated to FSF is $2,978 from the sale of this and other books.

This book is published under the GNU Free Documentation License.

120 pages
ISBN: 0-9541617-5-0 (ISBN-13: 978-0-9541617-5-0)