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Binary Files and Forcing Text Comparisons
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If `diff' thinks that either of the two files it is comparing is
binary (a non-text file), it normally treats that pair of files much as
if the summary output format had been selected ( Brief), and
reports only that the binary files are different. This is because line
by line comparisons are usually not meaningful for binary files.
`diff' determines whether a file is text or binary by checking the
first few bytes in the file; the exact number of bytes is system
dependent, but it is typically several thousand. If every byte in that
part of the file is non-null, `diff' considers the file to be text;
otherwise it considers the file to be binary.
Sometimes you might want to force `diff' to consider files to be
text. For example, you might be comparing text files that contain null
characters; `diff' would erroneously decide that those are non-text
files. Or you might be comparing documents that are in a format used
by a word processing system that uses null characters to indicate
special formatting. You can force `diff' to consider all files to be
text files, and compare them line by line, by using the `-a' or
`--text' option. If the files you compare using this option do not in
fact contain text, they will probably contain few newline characters,
and the `diff' output will consist of hunks showing differences between
long lines of whatever characters the files contain.
You can also force `diff' to consider all files to be binary files,
and report only whether they differ (but not how). Use the `-q' or
`--brief' option for this.
Differing binary files are considered to cause trouble because the
resulting `diff' output does not capture all the differences. This
trouble causes `diff' to exit with status 2. However, this trouble
cannot occur with the `--a' or `--text' option, or with the `-q' or
`--brief' option, as these options both cause `diff' to treat binary
files like text files.
In operating systems that distinguish between text and binary files,
`diff' normally reads and writes all data as text. Use the `--binary'
option to force `diff' to read and write binary data instead. This
option has no effect on a POSIX-compliant system like GNU or
traditional Unix. However, many personal computer operating systems
represent the end of a line with a carriage return followed by a
newline. On such systems, `diff' normally ignores these carriage
returns on input and generates them at the end of each output line, but
with the `--binary' option `diff' treats each carriage return as just
another input character, and does not generate a carriage return at the
end of each output line. This can be useful when dealing with non-text
files that are meant to be interchanged with POSIX-compliant systems.
The `--strip-trailing-cr' causes `diff' to treat input lines that
end in carriage return followed by newline as if they end in plain
newline. This can be useful when comparing text that is imperfectly
imported from many personal computer operating systems. This option
affects how lines are read, which in turn affects how they are compared
and output.
If you want to compare two files byte by byte, you can use the `cmp'
program with the `-l' option to show the values of each differing byte
in the two files. With GNU `cmp', you can also use the `-b' option to
show the ASCII representation of those bytes. Invoking cmp,
for more information.
If `diff3' thinks that any of the files it is comparing is binary (a
non-text file), it normally reports an error, because such comparisons
are usually not useful. `diff3' uses the same test as `diff' to decide
whether a file is binary. As with `diff', if the input files contain a
few non-text bytes but otherwise are like text files, you can force
`diff3' to consider all files to be text files and compare them line by
line by using the `-a' or `--text' options.
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