Mini Shell
GNU diffutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
* Noteworthy changes in release 3.7 (2018-12-31) [stable]
** Bug fixes
diff --strip-trailing-cr with a single CR byte in one input file
would provoke an uninitialized memory read, e.g.,
diff -a --strip-trailing-cr <(printf '\r') <(echo a)
[bug introduced in 2.8 with addition of the --strip-trailing-cr option]
** Improvements
diff --color now produces output compatible with less -R.
* Noteworthy changes in release 3.6 (2017-05-21) [stable]
** New features
When one file is a prefix of the other, cmp now appends the shorter
file's size to the EOF diagnostic.
** Bug fixes
Using an invalid regular expression with --ignore-matching-lines=RE (-I)
no longer causes stack overflow. Before, with an invocation like the
following, diff would diagnose the error, but would still proceed to
blow the stack: diff -Ia -I\\ <(echo) <(echo b)
[bug introduced in 2.9]
diff no longer mishandles line numbers exceeding 2**31 on Mingw-w64.
the ---presume-output-tty (ostensibly test-only) option would cause
diff --color to read an uninitialized variable
[bug introduced in 3.4]
** Performance changes
diff's default algorithm has been tweaked to deal better with larger
files, reversing some of the changes made in diffutils-3.4.
* Noteworthy changes in release 3.5 (2016-08-20) [stable]
** Bug fixes
diff3 no longer malfunctions due to use-after-free
[bug introduced in 3.4]
diff --color no longer colorizes when TERM=dumb
* Noteworthy changes in release 3.4 (2016-08-08) [stable]
** New features
diff accepts two new options --color and --palette to generate
and configure colored output. --color takes an optional argument
specifying when to colorize a line: --color=always, --color=auto,
--color=never. --palette is used to configure which colors are used.
** Bug fixes
When binary files differ, diff now exits with status 1 as POSIX requires.
Formerly it exited with status 2.
Unless the --ignore-file-name-case option is used, diff now
considers file names to be equal only if they are byte-for-byte
equivalent. This fixes a bug where diff in an English locale might
consider two Asian file names to be the same merely because they
contain no English characters.
diff -B no longer generates incorrect output if the two inputs
each end with a one-byte incomplete line.
diff --brief no longer reports a difference for unusual identical files.
For example, when comparing a file like /proc/cmdline (for which the linux
kernel reports st_size of 0 even though it is not an empty file) to a
copy of that file's contents residing on a "normal" file system:
$ f=/proc/cmdline; cp $f k; diff --brief $f k
Files /proc/cmdline and k differ
** Performance changes
diff's default algorithm has been adjusted to output higher-quality
results at somewhat greater computational cost, as CPUs have gotten
faster since the algorithm was last tweaked in diffutils-2.6 (1993).
* Noteworthy changes in release 3.3 (2013-03-24) [stable]
** New features
diff accepts a new option, --no-dereference. With this option, symbolic
links are treated specially: as a separate type of file that can compare
equal only to another symbolic link with the same value. For example,
with --no-dereference, two symbolic links compare equal when they have
the same value, even when that value does not reference a readable file.
--new-file (-N) and --unidirectional-new-file now allow comparisons to "-".
A standard input that's closed acts like a nonexistent file.
A file name containing spaces, double quotes, backslashes or control
characters is now encoded in a diff header as a double-quoted C string
literal. The escape sequences \\, \", \a, \b, \f, \n, \r, \t, \v and
\ooo (a three-digit octal number between 0 and 255) are used.
** Packaging
diffutils is now designed to build with Cygwin or MinGW rather than DJGPP.
The ms subdirectory has been removed.
* Noteworthy changes in release 3.2 (2011-09-02) [stable]
** Changes in behavior
--ignore-file-name-case now applies at the top level too.
For example, "diff dir inIt" might compare "dir/Init" to "inIt".
** New features
diff and sdiff have a new option --ignore-trailing-space (-Z).
** Packaging
The texinfo documentation no longer specifies "front-cover" or "back-cover"
texts, so that it may now be included in Debian's "main" section.
* Noteworthy changes in release 3.1 (2011-08-10) [stable]
** Bug fixes
diff no longer reports spurious differences merely because two entries
in the same directory have names that compare equal in the current
locale, or compare equal because --ignore-file-name-case was given.
* Noteworthy changes in release 3.0 (2010-05-03) [stable]
** Bug fixes
diff once again prints the required "\ No newline at end of file" line
when at least one input lacks a newline-at-EOF and the final hunk plus
context-length aligns exactly with the end of the newline-lacking file.
[bug introduced between 2.8.7 and 2.9]
** Changes in behavior
In context-style diffs, diff prints a portion of a preceding "function"
line for each hunk, with --show-function-line=RE (-F) or
--show-c-function (-p). Now, it trims leading blanks from such lines
before extracting a prefix. This is useful especially when a function
line is so far indented that the name itself would be truncated or not
included in the limited-width substring that diff appends.
diff once again reports a difference with the diagnostic
"Binary files A and B differ" when at least one of the files
appears to be binary. From 2.8.4 through diffutils-2.9, it printed
"Files A and B differ".
* Noteworthy changes in release 2.9 (2010-02-11) [stable]
** New features
New diff option --suppress-blank-empty.
Bring back support for 'diff -NUM', where NUM is a number,
even when conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. This change reverts to
the behavior of GNU diff 2.7 and earlier. This is a change only
when conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001; there is no effect when
conforming to older POSIX versions.
This change is in response to decisions taken in the January 2005
Austin Group standardization meeting. For more details, please see
"Utility Syntax Guidelines" in the Minutes of the January 2005
Meeting <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_239.html>.
sdiff now understands '1' and '2' as synonyms for 'l' and 'r'.
** Changes in behavior
sdiff and diff3 now invoke diff, not $(bindir)/diff
** Administrivia
New discussion and bug-reporting address: bug-diffutils@gnu.org
updated gnulib support
* Noteworthy changes in release 2.8.7 (2004-04-13) [stable]
Version 2.8.7 contains no user-visible changes.
User-visible changes in version 2.8.6:
* New diff3 option --strip-trailing-cr.
* With -N and -P, inaccessible empty regular files (the kind of files
that 'patch' creates to indicate nonexistent backups) are now
treated as nonexistent when they are in the 'backup' file position.
* If multiple SKIP values are given to cmp, e.g., 'cmp -i 10 -i 20',
cmp now uses the maximal value instead of the last one.
* diff now omits the ".000000000" on hosts that do not support
fractional timestamps.
Version 2.8.5 was not publicly released.
User-visible changes in version 2.8.4:
* Diff now simply prints "Files A and B differ" instead of "Binary
files A and B differ". The message is output if either A or B
appears to be a binary file, and the old wording was misleading
because it implied that both files are binary, which is not
necessarily the case.
User-visible changes in version 2.8.3:
* New locale: en_US.
User-visible changes in version 2.8.2:
* New diff and sdiff option:
--tabsize=COLUMNS
* If --ignore-space-change or --ignore-all-space is also specified,
--ignore-blank-lines now considers lines to be empty if they contain
only white space.
* More platforms now handle multibyte characters correctly when
excluding files by name (diff -x and -X).
* New locales: hu, pt_BR.
User-visible changes in version 2.8.1:
* Documentation fixes.
User-visible changes in version 2.8:
* cmp and diff now conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001 (IEEE Std 1003.1-2001)
if the underlying system conforms to POSIX and if the _POSIX2_VERSION
environment variable is set to 200112. Conformance removes support
for 'diff -NUM', where NUM is a number. Use -C NUM or -U NUM instead.
* cmp now supports trailing operands SKIP1 and SKIP2, like BSD cmp.
* cmp -i or --ignore-initial now accepts SKIP1:SKIP2 option value.
* New cmp option: -n or --bytes.
* cmp's old -c or --print-chars option has been renamed;
use -b or --print-bytes instead.
* cmp now outputs "byte" rather than "char" outside the POSIX locale.
* cmp -l's index column width now adjusts to fit larger (or smaller) files.
* cmp -l -s and cmp -s -l are not allowed. Use cmp -s or cmp -l instead.
* diff uses ISO 8601 style timestamps for output times (e.g. "2001-11-23
16:44:36.875702460 -0800") unless in the C or POSIX locale and the
-c style is specified.
* diff's -I and -F options use the regexp syntax of grep, not of Emacs.
* diff now accepts multiple context arguments, and uses their maximum value.
* New diff and sdiff options:
-E --ignore-tab-expansion
--strip-trailing-cr
* New diff options:
--from-file=FILE, --to-file=FILE
--ignore-file-name-case
--no-ignore-file-name-case
* New diff3 and sdiff option:
--diff-program=PROGRAM
* The following diff options are still accepted, but are no longer documented.
They may be withdrawn in future releases.
-h (omit; it has no effect)
-H (use --speed-large-files instead)
-L (use --label instead)
-P (use --unidirectional-new-file instead)
--inhibit-hunk-merge (omit; it has no effect)
* Recursive diffs now sort file names according to the LC_COLLATE locale
category if possible, instead of using native byte comparison.
* Recursive diffs now detect and report directory loops.
* Diff printf specs can now use the "0" and "'" flags.
* The new sdiff interactive command 'ed' precedes each version with a header.
* On 64-bit hosts, files larger than 2 GB can be compared.
* Some internationalization support has been added, but multibyte locales
are still not completely supported yet.
* Some diagnostics have been reworded slightly for consistency.
Also, 'diff -D FOO' now outputs '/* ! FOO */' instead of '/* not FOO */'.
* The 'patch' part of the manual now describes 'patch' version 2.5.4.
* Man pages are now distributed and installed.
* There is support for DJGPP; see the 'ms' subdirectory and the files
m4/dos.m4 and */setmode.*.
User-visible changes in version 2.7:
* New diff option: --binary (useful only on non-POSIX hosts)
* diff -b and -w now ignore line incompleteness; -B no longer does this.
* cmp -c now uses locale to decide which output characters to quote.
* Help and version messages are reorganized.
User-visible changes in version 2.6:
* New cmp, diff, diff3, sdiff option: --help
* A new heuristic for diff greatly reduces the time needed to compare
large input files that contain many differences.
* Partly as a result, GNU diff's output is not exactly the same as before.
Usually it is a bit smaller, but sometimes it is a bit larger.
User-visible changes in version 2.5:
* New cmp option: -v --version
User-visible changes in version 2.4:
* New cmp option: --ignore-initial=BYTES
* New diff3 option: -T --initial-tab
* New diff option: --line-format=FORMAT
* New diff group format specifications:
<PRINTF_SPEC>[eflmnEFLMN]
A printf spec followed by one of the following letters
causes the integer corresponding to that letter to be
printed according to the printf specification.
E.g. '%5df' prints the number of the first line in the
group in the old file using the "%5d" format.
e: line number just before the group in old file; equals f - 1
f: first line number in group in the old file
l: last line number in group in the old file
m: line number just after the group in old file; equals l + 1
n: number of lines in group in the old file; equals l - f + 1
E, F, L, M, N: likewise, for lines in the new file
%(A=B?T:E)
If A equals B then T else E. A and B are each either a decimal
constant or a single letter interpreted as above. T and E are
arbitrary format strings. This format spec is equivalent to T if
A's value equals B's; otherwise it is equivalent to E. For
example, '%(N=0?no:%dN) line%(N=1?:s)' is equivalent to 'no lines'
if N (the number of lines in the group in the new file) is 0,
to '1 line' if N is 1, and to '%dN lines' otherwise.
%c'C'
where C is a single character, stands for the character C. C may not
be a backslash or an apostrophe. E.g. %c':' stands for a colon.
%c'\O'
where O is a string of 1, 2, or 3 octal digits, stands for the
character with octal code O. E.g. %c'\0' stands for a null character.
* New diff line format specifications:
<PRINTF_SPEC>n
The line number, printed with <PRINTF_SPEC>.
E.g. '%5dn' prints the line number with a "%5d" format.
%c'C'
%c'\O'
The character C, or with octal code O, as above.
* Supported <PRINTF_SPEC>s have the same meaning as with printf, but must
match the extended regular expression %-*[0-9]*(\.[0-9]*)?[doxX].
* The format spec %0 introduced in version 2.1 has been removed, since it
is incompatible with printf specs like %02d. To represent a null char,
use %c'\0' instead.
* cmp and diff now conform to POSIX 1003.2-1992 (ISO/IEC 9945-2:1993)
if the underlying system conforms to POSIX:
- Some messages' wordings are changed in minor ways.
- "White space" is now whatever C's 'isspace' says it is.
- When comparing directories, if 'diff' finds a file that is not a regular
file or a directory, it reports the file's type instead of diffing it.
(As usual, it follows symbolic links first.)
- When signaled, sdiff exits with the signal's status, not with status 2.
* Now portable to hosts where int, long, pointer, etc. are not all the same
size.
* 'cmp - -' now works like 'diff - -'.
User-visible changes in version 2.3:
* New diff option: --horizon-lines=lines
User-visible changes in version 2.1:
* New diff options:
--{old,new,unchanged}-line-format='format'
--{old,new,unchanged,changed}-group-format='format'
-U
* New diff3 option:
-A --show-all
* diff3 -m now defaults to -A, not -E.
* diff3 now takes up to three -L or --label options, not just two.
If just two options are given, they refer to the first two input files,
not the first and third input files.
* sdiff and diff -y handle incomplete lines.
User-visible changes in version 2.0:
* Add sdiff and cmp programs.
* Add Texinfo documentation.
* Add configure script.
* Improve diff performance.
* New diff options:
-x --exclude
-X --exclude-from
-P --unidirectional-new-file
-W --width
-y --side-by-side
--left-column
--sdiff-merge-assist
--suppress-common-lines
* diff options renamed:
--label renamed from --file-label
--forward-ed renamed from --reversed-ed
--paginate renamed from --print
--entire-new-file renamed from --entire-new-files
--new-file renamed from --new-files
--all-text removed
* New diff3 options:
-v --version
* Add long-named equivalents for other diff3 options.
* diff options -F (--show-function-line) and -I (--ignore-matching-lines)
can now be given more than once.
Copyright (C) 1993-1994, 1998, 2001-2002, 2004, 2006, 2009-2013, 2015-2018 Free
Software Foundation, Inc.
This file is part of GNU Diffutils.
This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
GNU General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
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