Concept

Diff

Summary

In computing, the utility diff is a data comparison tool that computes and displays the differences between the contents of files. Unlike edit distance notions used for other purposes, diff is line-oriented rather than character-oriented, but it is like Levenshtein distance in that it tries to determine the smallest set of deletions and insertions to create one file from the other. The utility displays the changes in one of several standard formats, such that both humans or computers can parse the changes, and use them for patching. Typically, diff is used to show the changes between two versions of the same file. Modern implementations also support s. The output is called a "diff", or a patch, since the output can be applied with the Unix program . The output of similar file comparison utilities is also called a "diff"; like the use of the word "grep" for describing the act of searching, the word diff became a generic term for calculating data difference and the results thereof. The POSIX standard specifies the behavior of the "diff" and "patch" utilities and their file formats. diff was developed in the early 1970s on the Unix operating system, which was emerging from Bell Labs in Murray Hill, New Jersey. The first released version shipped with the 5th Edition of Unix in 1974, and was written by Douglas McIlroy, and James Hunt. This research was published in a 1976 paper co-written with James W. Hunt, who developed an initial prototype of . The algorithm this paper described became known as the Hunt–Szymanski algorithm. McIlroy's work was preceded and influenced by Steve Johnson's comparison program on GECOS and Mike Lesk's program. also originated on Unix and, like , produced line-by-line changes and even used angle-brackets (">" and "

Official source

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diff

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