.TH DIFF3 1 "22sep1993" "GNU Tools" "GNU Tools" .SH NAME diff3 \- find differences between three files .SH SYNOPSIS .B diff3 [options] mine older yours .SH DESCRIPTION The .I diff3 command compares three files and outputs descriptions of their differences. The files to compare are .IR mine , .IR older , and .IR yours . At most one of these three file names may be .BR \- , which tells .I diff3 to read the standard input for that file. .SS Options Below is a summary of all of the options that GNU .I diff3 accepts. Multiple single letter options (unless they take an argument) can be combined into a single command line argument. .TP .B \-a Treat all files as text and compare them line-by-line, even if they do not appear to be text. .TP .B \-A Incorporate all changes from .I older to .I yours into .IR mine , surrounding all conflicts with bracket lines. .TP .B \-e Generate an .I ed script that incorporates all the changes from .I older to .I yours into .IR mine . .TP .B \-E Like .BR \-e , except bracket lines from overlapping changes' first and third files. With .BR \-e , an overlapping change looks like this: .sp .nf <<<<<<< \fImine\fP lines from \fImine\fP ======= lines from \fIyours\fP >>>>>>> \fIyours\fP .fi .TP .B \-\-ed Generate an .I ed script that incorporates all the changes from .I older to .I yours into .IR mine . .TP .B \-\-easy\-only Like .BR \-e , except output only the nonoverlapping changes. .TP .B \-i Generate .B w and .B q commands at the end of the .I ed script for System V compatibility. This option must be combined with one of the .B \-AeExX3 options, and may not be combined with .BR \-m . .TP .B \-\-initial\-tab Output a tab rather than two spaces before the text of a line in normal format. This causes the alignment of tabs in the line to look normal. .TP .BI "\-L " label .ns .TP .BI \-\-label= label Use the label .I label for the brackets output by the .BR \-A , .B \-E and .B \-X options. This option may be given up to three times, one for each input file. The default labels are the names of the input files. Thus .B "diff3 \-L X \-L Y \-L Z \-m A B C" acts like .BR "diff3 \-m A B C , except that the output looks like it came from files named .BR X , .B Y and .B Z rather than from files named .BR A , .B B and .BR C . .TP .B \-m .br .ns .TP .B \-\-merge Apply the edit script to the first file and send the result to standard output. Unlike piping the output from .I diff3 to .IR ed , this works even for binary files and incomplete lines. .B \-A is assumed if no edit script option is specified. .TP .B \-\-overlap\-only Like .BR \-e , except output only the overlapping changes. .TP .B \-\-show\-all Incorporate all unmerged changes from .I older to .I yours into .IR mine , surrounding all overlapping changes with bracket lines. .TP .B \-\-show\-overlap Like .BR \-e , except bracket lines from overlapping changes' first and third files. .TP .B \-T Output a tab rather than two spaces before the text of a line in normal format. This causes the alignment of tabs in the line to look normal. .TP .B \-\-text Treat all files as text and compare them line-by-line, even if they do not appear to be text. .TP .B \-v .br .ns .TP .B \-\-version Output the version number of .IR diff3 . .TP .B \-x Like .BR \-e , except output only the overlapping changes. .TP .B \-X Like .BR \-E , except output only the overlapping changes. In other words, like .BR \-x , except bracket changes as in .BR \-E . .TP .B \-3 Like .BR \-e , except output only the nonoverlapping changes. .SH SEE ALSO cmp(1), comm(1), diff(1), ed(1), patch(1), sdiff(1). .SH DIAGNOSTICS An exit status of 0 means .I diff3 was successful, 1 means some conflicts were found, and 2 means trouble.