Diff
Diff is a command-line tool, used in Terminal, to find differences in codebases, files, and folders.
To simply compare two files, use this command.
diff file1.txt file2.txt
You can also compare two folders.
diff /path/folder1 /path/folder1
To see only the filenames the differ, use ‘-q’ option.
diff -q /path/folder1 /path/folder1
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 and include all subfolders.
diff -rq /path/folder1 /path/folder1
To ignore certain folders on comparison, use ‘-x’.
diff -x tmp -x photos /path/folder1 /path/folder1
To view differences side by side, use ‘-y’ option.
diff -y file1.txt file2.txt
To learn more, type “man diff”.