COLORDIFF(1) User Commands COLORDIFF(1)

NAME

colordiff - a tool to colorize diff output

SYNOPSIS

colordiff [diff options] [colordiff 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 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 ...

OPTIONS

colordiff will send most options through to diff, but there are
various colordiff-specific options which can be used:

--help
Show these colordiff-specific options

--color=(yes|no)
Force (or suppress) display of colours in output

--color=patches=(yes|no)
Force (or suppress) inclusion of colour codes in patch output

--color-term-output-only
Force colour to only appear in terminal output

--difftype=DIFFTYPE
Force difftype detection to specified format. DIFFTYPE can be:
diff, diffc, diffu, diffy, debdiff, wdiff

--(no)banner
Show (or suppress) the colordiff banner

FILES

/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 /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 /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 02/19/2024 COLORDIFF(1)