16.1 Options to sdiff

Below is a summary of all of the options that GNU sdiff accepts. Each option has two equivalent names, one of which is a single letter preceded by ‘-’, and the other of which is a long name preceded by ‘--’. Multiple single letter options (unless they take an argument) can be combined into a single command line argument. Long named options can be abbreviated to any unique prefix of their name.

‘-a’

‘--text’

Treat all files as text and compare them line-by-line, even if they do not appear to be text. See section Binary Files and Forcing Text Comparisons.

‘-b’

‘--ignore-space-change’

Ignore changes in amount of white space. See section Suppressing Differences in Blank and Tab Spacing.

‘-B’

‘--ignore-blank-lines’

Ignore changes that just insert or delete blank lines. See section Suppressing Differences in Blank Lines.

‘-d’

‘--minimal’

Change the algorithm to perhaps find a smaller set of changes. This makes sdiff slower (sometimes much slower). See section diff Performance Tradeoffs.

‘--diff-program=program’

Use the compatible comparison program program to compare files instead of diff.

‘-E’

‘--ignore-tab-expansion’

Ignore changes due to tab expansion. See section Suppressing Differences in Blank and Tab Spacing.

‘--help’

Output a summary of usage and then exit.

‘-i’

‘--ignore-case’

Ignore changes in case; consider upper- and lower-case to be the same. See section Suppressing Case Differences.

‘-I regexp’

‘--ignore-matching-lines=regexp’

Ignore changes that just insert or delete lines that match regexp. See section Suppressing Lines Matching a Regular Expression.

‘-l’

‘--left-column’

Print only the left column of two common lines. See section Controlling Side by Side Format.

‘-o file’

‘--output=file’

Put merged output into file. This option is required for merging.

‘-s’

‘--suppress-common-lines’

Do not print common lines. See section Controlling Side by Side Format.

‘--speed-large-files’

Use heuristics to speed handling of large files that have numerous scattered small changes. See section diff Performance Tradeoffs.

‘--strip-trailing-cr’

Strip any trailing carriage return at the end of an input line. See section Binary Files and Forcing Text Comparisons.

‘-t’

‘--expand-tabs’

Expand tabs to spaces in the output, to preserve the alignment of tabs in the input files. See section Preserving Tab Stop Alignment.

‘-v’

‘--version’

Output version information and then exit.

‘-w columns’

‘--width=columns’

Output at most columns (default 130) print columns per line. See section Controlling Side by Side Format. Note that for historical reasons, this option is ‘-W’ in diff, ‘-w’ in sdiff.

‘-W’

‘--ignore-all-space’

Ignore white space when comparing lines. See section Suppressing Differences in Blank and Tab Spacing. Note that for historical reasons, this option is ‘-w’ in diff, ‘-W’ in sdiff.