bdiff filename1 filename2 [n] [-s]
bdiff is used in a manner analogous to diff to find which lines in
filename1 and filename2 must be changed to bring the files into
agreement. Its purpose is to allow processing of files too large for
diff. If filename1 (filename2) is −, the standard
input is read.
bdiff ignores lines common to the beginning of both files,
splits the remainder of each file into n-line segments, and invokes
diff on corresponding segments. If both optional arguments are
specified, they must appear in the order indicated above.
The output of bdiff is exactly that of diff, with
line numbers adjusted to account for the segmenting of the files (that is,
to make it look as if the files had been processed whole). Note: Because of
the segmenting of the files, bdiff does not necessarily find a
smallest sufficient set of file differences.
The options are:
Use help(1) for explanations.
- The number of line segments. The value of n is 3500 by default. If
the optional third argument is given and it is numeric, it is used as the
value for n. This is useful in those cases in which 3500-line
segments are too large for diff, causing it to fail.
- Specifies that no diagnostics are to be printed by bdiff (silent
option). Note: However, this does not suppress possible diagnostic
messages from diff, which bdiff calls.