diff3 compares three versions of a file, and publishes disagreeing ranges of text flagged with these codes:

====

all three files differ

====1

filename1 is different

====2

filename2 is different

====3

filename3 is different

The type of change suffered in converting a given range of a given file to some other is indicated in one of these ways:

f : n1 a

Text is to be appended after line number n1 in file f, where f = 1, 2, or 3.

f : n1 , n2 c

Text is to be changed in the range line n1 to line n2. If n1 = n2, the range may be abbreviated to n1.

The original contents of the range follows immediately after a c indication. When the contents of two files are identical, the contents of the lower-numbered file is suppressed.

The following command will apply the resulting script to filename1.

(cat script; echo ´1,$p´) | ed - filename1

-e

Produce a script for the ed(1) editor that will incorporate into filename1 all changes between filename2 and filename3 (that is, the changes that normally would be flagged ==== and ====3).

-x

Produce a script to incorporate only changes flagged ====.

-3

Produce a script to incorporate only changes flagged ====3.

-E

Produce a script that will incorporate all changes between filename2 and filename3, but treat overlapping changes (that is, changes that would be flagged with ==== in the normal listing) differently. The overlapping lines from both files will be inserted by the edit script, bracketed by <<<<<< and >>>>>> lines.

-X

Produce a script that will incorporate only changes flagged ====, but treat these changes in the manner of the -E option.

See largefile(5) for the description of the behavior of diff3 when encountering files greater than or equal to 2 Gbyte ( 2³¹ bytes).

/tmp/d3*

/usr/lib/diff3prog

See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attributes:

diff(1), attributes(5), largefile(5)

Text lines that consist of a single `.' will defeat -e.

Files longer than 64 Kbytes will not work.