COMBINEDIFF(1)

NAME
combinediff - create a cumulative patch from two incremental patches

SYNOPSIS
combinediff [-p n] [-U n] [-d PAT] [-Bbiqwz]
            [--interpolate | --combine] diff1 diff2
combinediff {--help | --version}

DESCRIPTION

combinediff creates a unified diff that expresses the sum of two unified diffs (patches created with the -u option to diff). The diff files must be listed in the order that they are to be applied. For best results, the diffs must have at least three lines of context.

OPTIONS

-p n
    When comparing filenames, ignore the first n pathname components from both patches. (This is similar to the -p option to GNU patch(1).)

-q  Quieter output. Don't emit rationale lines at the beginning of each patch.

-U n
    Attempt to display n lines of context (requires at least n lines of context in both input files). (This is similar to the -U option to GNU diff(1).)

-d pattern
    Don't display any context on files that match the shell wildcard pattern. This option can be given multiple times. Note that the interpretation of the shell wildcard pattern does not count slash characters or periods as special (in other words, no flags are given to fnmatch). This is so that ``*/basename''-type patterns can be given without limiting the number of pathname components.

-i  Consider upper- and lower-case to be the same.

-w  Ignore whitespace changes in patches.

-b  Ignore changes in the amount of whitespace.

-B  Ignore changes whose lines are all blank.

-z  Decompress files with extensions .gz and .bz2.

--interpolate
    Run as ``interdiff''. See combinediff(1) for more information about how the behaviour is altered in this mode.

--combine
    Run as ``combinediff''. This is the default.

--help
    Display a short usage message.

--version
    Display the version number of combinediff.

BUGS

The -U option is a bit erratic: it can control the amount of context displayed for files that are modified in both patches, but not for files that only appear in one patch (which appear with the same amount of context in the output as in the input).

SEE ALSO

interdiff(1)

AUTHOR
Tim Waugh <twaugh@redhat.com>.