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16.1 Options to sdiff ¶

Below is a summary of all of the options that GNU sdiff accepts. Each option has two equivalent names, one of which is a single letter preceded by ‘-’, and the other of which is a long name preceded by ‘--’. Multiple single letter options (unless they take an argument) can be combined into a single command line argument. Long named options can be abbreviated to any unique prefix of their name.

-a

--text

Treat all files as text and compare them line-by-line, even if they do not appear to be text. See Binary Files and Forcing Text Comparisons.

-b

--ignore-space-change

Ignore changes in amount of white space. See Suppressing Differences in Blank and Tab Spacing.

-B

--ignore-blank-lines

Ignore changes that just insert or delete blank lines. See Suppressing Differences Whose Lines Are All Blank.

-d

--minimal

Change the algorithm to perhaps find a smaller set of changes. This makes sdiff slower (sometimes much slower). See diff Performance Tradeoffs.

--diff-program=program

Use the compatible comparison program program to compare files instead of diff.

-E

--ignore-tab-expansion

Ignore changes due to tab expansion. See Suppressing Differences in Blank and Tab Spacing.

--help

Output a summary of usage and then exit.

-i

--ignore-case

Ignore changes in case; consider upper- and lower-case to be the same. See Suppressing Case Differences.

-I regexp

--ignore-matching-lines=regexp

Ignore changes that just insert or delete lines that match regexp. See Suppressing Differences Whose Lines All Match a Regular Expression.

-l

--left-column

Print only the left column of two common lines. See Controlling Side by Side Format.

-o file

--output=file

Put merged output into file. This option is required for merging.

-s

--suppress-common-lines

Do not print common lines. See Controlling Side by Side Format.

--speed-large-files

Use heuristics to speed handling of large files that have numerous scattered small changes. See diff Performance Tradeoffs.

--strip-trailing-cr

Strip any trailing carriage return at the end of an input line. See Binary Files and Forcing Text Comparisons.

-t

--expand-tabs

Expand tabs to spaces in the output, to preserve the alignment of tabs in the input files. See Preserving Tab Stop Alignment.

--tabsize=columns

Assume that tab stops are set every columns (default 8) print columns. See Preserving Tab Stop Alignment.

-v

--version

Output version information and then exit.

-w columns

--width=columns

Output at most columns (default 130) print columns per line. See Controlling Side by Side Format. Note that for historical reasons, this option is -W in diff, -w in sdiff.

-W

--ignore-all-space

Ignore white space when comparing lines. See Suppressing Differences in Blank and Tab Spacing. Note that for historical reasons, this option is -w in diff, -W in sdiff.

-Z

--ignore-trailing-space

Ignore white space at line end. See Suppressing Differences in Blank and Tab Spacing.