COLORDIFF(1) User Commands COLORDIFF(1)NAMEcolordiff - a tool to colorize diff output
SYNOPSIScolordiff [diff options] [colordiff options] {file1} {file2}
DESCRIPTIONcolordiff 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.
USAGE
Use colordiff wherever you would normally use diff, or instead 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 want to force disable colour escape sequences (for example pipe
the output to patch), you can use option '--color=no' to do so:
$ diff -u file1 file2 | colordiff --color=no | patch -p0 -d another-working-dir
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.
By default colordiff returns the exit code of the underlying diff
invocation (if there is one), but there are some circumstances where it
is useful to force colordiff's exit code to be zero: to do this use the
option '--fakeexitcode':
colordiff--fakeexitcode ...
FILES
/usr/local/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 /usr/local/etc/colordiffrc or
~/.colordiffrc and customize.
colordiffrc-gitdiff
Alternate configuration template for use with terminals having dark
backgrounds, with colour defaults set to match the output of 'git
diff'. Copy this to /usr/local/etc/colordiffrc or ~/.colordiffrc
and customize.
BUGS
Bug reports and suggestions/patches to davee@sungate.co.uk please.
AUTHORS
Dave Ewart
colordiff author and Debian packager
Graham Wilson
Manual page and XML source author
Colin Tuckley
Debian package sponsor
colordiff 05/21/2015 COLORDIFF(1)
