lmemsm

Diff Utilities

2025-10-18T15:14:28Z

I've been looking at different diff tools trying to figure out how I would design my own cross-platform portable diff program with the features I use most. The most interesting thing I found out was how different the various outputs of the diff programs all are. There's also no one algorithm that creates the most intuitive output for a human to read. A certain algorithm may be better for one case but not for another. I'll share a summary of what I've researched about diff utilities so far.

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diff and patch

2022-01-29T21:14:57Z

I've been interested in the BSD versions of diff and patch for a long while now. I often use a version of patch modified from various BSD patch implementations that were based on patch version 2.0.12u8. My variation includes some support for carriage return/line feed differences among systems. I've found it useful when working with patches from Windows or DOS systems that might accidentally introduce carriage return/line feed sequences instead of just line feed which POSIX systems use.

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