
Name

   colordiff -- a tool to colorize diff output

Synopsis

   colordiff [diff options] {file1} {file2}

Description

   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.

Usage

   Use colordiff wherever you would normally use diff, or pipe
   output to colordiff:

   For example:
$ colordiff file1 file2
$ diff -u file1 file2 | colordiff

   You to change colours 'on the fly':
$colordiff --file-new=magenta file1 file2

   Available options for changing colours on the fly are:
   --file-old, --file-new, --diff-stuff, --plain-text.
   Experiment!

   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

   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.

   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.

Files

   /etc/colordiffrc
          Central configuration file. User-specific settings can
          be enabled by copying this file to ~/.colordiffrc and
          making the appropriate changes.

Bugs

   Bug reports and suggestions/patches to <davee@sungate.co.uk>
   please.

   colordiff does not work for side-by-side diffs (diff -y). Note
   that does not work simply means that the resulting output will
   not be colour-highlighted -- correct output will still be
   produced.

Author

   colordiff is written and maintained by Dave Ewart
   <davee@sungate.co.uk>. This manual page and the source XML was
   written by Graham Wilson <bob@decoy.wox.org> for Debian and is
   maintained by the author. Graham Wilson also maintains the
   Debian package for colordiff.
