NAME¶
dwdiff - a delimited word diff program
SYNOPSIS¶
dwdiff [
OPTIONS]
OLD FILE NEW FILE
dwdiff [
OPTIONS]
--diff-input [
DIFF FILE]
DESCRIPTION¶
dwdiff is a
diff program that operates at the word level instead
of the line level. It is different from
wdiff in that it allows the
user to specify what should be considered whitespace, and in that it takes an
optional list of characters that should be considered delimiters. Delimiters
are single characters that are treated as if they are words, even when there
is no whitespace separating them from preceding words or delimiters.
dwdiff is mostly command-line compatible with
wdiff. Only the
--autopager, --terminal and --avoid-wraps options are not supported.
The default output from
dwdiff is the new text, with the deleted and
inserted parts annotated with markers. Command line options are available to
change both what is printed, and the markers.
OPTIONS¶
dwdiff accepts the following options (Note that all strings will first be
escape expanded. All standard \-escapes are supported, as well as \u and \U
Unicode escapes):
- -h, --help
- Display a short help message.
- -v, --version
- Print version and copyright information.
- -d delimiters, --delimiters=delimiters
- Specify a list of characters to be used as delimiters.
- -P, --punctuation
- Use punctuation characters as delimiters. The exact set of punctuation
characters depends on the current locale.
- -W whitespace, --whitespace=whitespace
- Specify a list of characters to be used as whitespace.
- --diff-input
- Interpret the input as the output from diff in the Unified Diff
format (usually produced by diff -u). In this case only one input
file is allowed. This option allows reformating diff output with
dwdiff, and is useful for example to post-process the output of
svn diff.
- -1, --no-deleted
- Suppress printing of words deleted from the first file.
- -2, --no-inserted
- Suppress printing of words inserted in the second file.
- -3, --no-common
- Suppress printing of words common to both files.
- -L[width], --line-numbers[=width]
- Show line numbers at the start of each line. The line numbers displayed
are the line number in the old file and the line number in the new file
respectively. The optional width argument is the minimum number of
positions per line number.
- -Cnum, --context=num
- Show num lines of context before and after each changes. A line
with only -- is printed between blocks of changes.
- -s, --statistics
- Print statistics when done. The numbers printed include the number of
words from in both files, the number of deleted words, the number of
inserted words, and the number of changed words. The number of changed
words is counted as the number of words that are removed from the first
file, and the number of words that replace them from the second file. All
of these numbers are also expressed as a percentage of the total number of
words in the file the words came from.
- -i, --ignore-case
- Ignore differences in case when comparing words. This option is only
available if the diff program that is called provides it.
- -I, --ignore-formatting
- Ignore differences in formatting of characters. This option switches to
using the Unicode compatibility decomposition instead of the canonical
decomposition. The compatibility decomposition discards formatting
information. For example, the ligature fi will be decomposed into two
separate characters for the purposes of comparison. However, also super-
and subscript will be regarded equal as well as different rotations of the
same character.
- -c[spec], --color[=spec]
- Color mode. The optional spec can be used to customize the colors.
spec consists of [delete],[insert]. If either is
omited it will be set to its default color (bright red or bright green
respectively). Both parts of the spec consist of [
foreground][: background]. To obtain a list of permissible
color names, use the word ``list'' as spec. Alternatively, you can
specify any escape sequence to set attributes as a color by prepending
e:.
- The standard markers for the begin and end of deleted and inserted text
are suppressed, but any markers specified on the command line will still
be printed.
- -l, --less-mode
- As -p but also overstrike deleted whitespace.
- -p, --printer
- Use overstriking with an underscore and bold text to emphasize changes.
This is implemented by first printing the underscore or a duplicate of the
character to be printed, followed by a backspace, followed by the
character. On regular terminals you won't see any effect. The
less(1) command will however show underlined and bold text.
- The standard markers for the begin and end of deleted and inserted text
are suppressed, but any markers specified on the command line will still
be printed.
- -mnum, --match-context=num
- Use num words of context before and after words for matching. Words
in the old text will then only match words in the new text if words
surrounding them are also equal. This improves the output for
dwdiff for large changes with frequently occuring words. However,
using context requires more disk space and more processing time. The
default value is 1. Set this option to 0 to revert to the pre 1.5
behavior.
- --aggregate-changes
- Allow multiple close changes to be treated as one change, if context words
are used (see --match-context). This option reduces the processing
time as the changes reported by the diff program are not
post-processed to give more precise results.
- -A algorithm, --algorithm=algorithm
- Select the algorithm to be used for determining differences. There are
three possible values for algorithm: best, which tries to
find the minimal set of changes, normal, which trades some
optimality for speed, and fast, which assumes that the input is
large and contains few changes. By default the normal algorithm is
used.
- -S[marker],
--paragraph-separator[=marker]
- Show insertion or deletion of blocks of lines with only whitespace
characters. A special marker is inserted into the output to indicate these
blocks. The default marker is --.
- --wdiff-output
- Create wdiff compatible output. The dwdiff program uses a
different output algorithm, which provides a more intuitive output.
- -w string, --start-delete=string
- Specify a string to mark begin of deleted text.
- -x string, --stop-delete=string
- Specify a string to mark end of deleted text.
- -y string, --start-insert=string
- Specify a string to mark begin of inserted text.
- -z string, --stop-insert=string
- Specify a string to mark end of inserted text.
- -R, --repeat-markers
- Repeat the begin and end markers at the start and end of line if a change
crosses a newline.
A single dash (-) as a file can be used to denote standard input. Only one file
can be read from standard input. To stop
dwdiff from interpreting file
names that start with a dash as options, one can specify a double dash (--)
after which
dwdiff will interpret any following arguments as files to
read.
BUGS¶
If you think you have found a bug, please check that you are using the latest
version of
dwdiff <
http://os.ghalkes.nl/dwdiff.html>. When
reporting bugs, please include a minimal example that demonstrates the
problem.
AUTHOR¶
G.P. Halkes <dwdiff@ghalkes.nl>
COPYRIGHT¶
Copyright © 2006-2011 G.P. Halkes and others
dwdiff is licensed under the GNU General Public License version 3.
For more details on the license, see the file COPYING in the documentation
directory. On Un*x systems this is usually /usr/share/doc/dwdiff-2.0.9.
SEE ALSO¶
dwfilter(1),
wdiff(1),
diff(1)