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diff and patch — comparing and applying changes

cheat sheet · GNU diffutils https://lab.dimsanych.ru/en/wiki/diff-patch/

Cheat sheet

diff -u a b readable differences
diff -qr dir1 dir2 which files differ
diff <(cmd1) <(cmd2) compare the output of two commands
diff -u orig new > p.patch make a patch
patch orig < p.patch apply the patch
patch --dry-run -p1 < git.patch check it applies, without writing
patch -R < p.patch revert an applied patch
vimdiff a b side by side

Options

Below are the main flags of diff and patch; the full list is in man diff, man patch.