Diff
Use ‘diff’ command in Terminal to find differences in codebases, files, and folders.
Compare two files
To simply compare two files, use this command.
diff file1.txt file2.txt
Compare two folders
You can also compare two folders.
diff /path/folder1 /path/folder1
Show only filenames
To see only the filenames the differ, use ‘-q’ option.
diff -q /path/folder1 /path/folder1
Include subfolders
Include all subfolders and files within them using recursive option ‘-r’.
diff -r /path/folder1 /path/folder1
To view just the list of files that differ.
diff -rq /path/folder1 /path/folder1
Ignore folders
To ignore certain folders on comparison, use ‘-x’.
diff -x tmp -x photos /path/folder1 /path/folder1
Viewing side-by-side
To view differences side by side, use ‘-y’ option.
diff -y file1.txt file2.txt