diff"> colordiff"> ]> colordiff 1 colordiff a tool to colorize &diff; output
colordiff &diff; options &colordiff; options file1 file2 &colordiff; is a
wrapper for &diff; and produces the same output as &diff; but with coloured
syntax highlighting at the command line to improve readability. The output is
similar to how a &diff;-generated patch might appear in Vim or Emacs with the
appropriate syntax highlighting options enabled. The colour schemes can be read
from a central configuration file or from a local user ~/.colordiffrc file. &
colordiff; makes use of ANSI colours and as such will only work when ANSI
colours can be used - typical examples are xterms and Eterms, as well as
console sessions. &colordiff; has been tested on various flavours of Linux and
under OpenBSD, but should be broadly portable to other systems. Use &colordiff;
wherever you would normally use &diff;, or pipe output to &colordiff;: For
example: $ colordiff file1 file2 $ diff -u file1 file2 | colordiff You can pipe
the output to 'less', using the '-R' option (some systems or terminal types may
get better results using '-r' instead), which keeps the colour escape
sequences, otherwise displayed incorrectly or discarded by 'less': $ diff -u
file1 file2 | colordiff | less -R If you have wdiff installed, colordiff will
correctly colourise the added and removed text, provided that the '-n' option
is given to wdiff: $ wdiff -n file1 file2 | colordiff You may find it useful to
make &diff; automatically call colordiff. Add the following line to ~/.bashrc
(or equivalent): alias diff=colordiff Any options passed to &colordiff; are
passed through to &diff; except for the colordiff-specific option 'difftype',
e.g. colordiff --difftype=debdiff file1 file2 Valid values for 'difftype' are:
diff, diffc, diffu, diffy, wdiff, debdiff; these correspond to plain diffs,
context diffs, unified diffs, side-by-side diffs, wdiff output and debdiff
output respectively. Use these overrides when colordiff is not able to
determine the diff-type automatically. Alternatively, a construct such as 'cvs
diff SOMETHING | colordiff' can be included in ~/.bashrc as follows: function
cvsdiff () { cvs diff $@ | colordiff; } Or, combining the idea above using
'less': function cvsdiff () { cvs diff $@ | colordiff |less -R; } Note that the
function name, cvsdiff, can be customized. /etc/colordiffrc Central
configuration file. User-specific settings can be enabled by copying this file
to ~/.colordiffrc and making the appropriate changes. colordiffrc-lightbg
Alternate configuration template for use with terminals having light
backgrounds. Copy this to /etc/colordiffrc or ~/.colordiffrc and customize. Bug
reports and suggestions/patches to davee@sungate.co.uk please. &colordiff; is
written and maintained by Dave Ewart davee@sungate.co.uk. This manual page and
the source XML was written by Graham Wilson graham@mknod.org for Debian and is
maintained by the author. Dave Ewart maintains the Debian package, sponsored by
Graham Wilson.
