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Date:      Thu, 30 Dec 1999 01:27:59 +0800
From:      Peter Wemm <peter@netplex.com.au>
To:        Bruce Evans <bde@zeta.org.au>
Cc:        Matthew Jacob <mjacob@feral.com>, Bill Fumerola <billf@chc-chimes.com>, arch@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: Changing diff's default output format 
Message-ID:  <19991229172759.1847E1CCF@overcee.netplex.com.au>
In-Reply-To: Message from Bruce Evans <bde@zeta.org.au>  of "Thu, 30 Dec 1999 02:11:25 %2B1100." <Pine.BSF.4.10.9912300208570.818-100000@alphplex.bde.org> 

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Bruce Evans wrote:
> On Tue, 28 Dec 1999, Matthew Jacob wrote:
> 
> > That's hardly the point. The point here, which I won't defend very
> > vigorously, is that there are maybe 10 basic Unix utilities, that should
> > be default look pretty much the same across *all* Unix systems.
> > 
> > There may be some POSIX collateral on this, if not SVID stuff- I'm too far
> 
> >From a POSIX.2 draft:
> 
> P2> 4.17  diff - Compare two files
> P2>
> P2>
> P2> 4.17.1  Synopsis
> P2>
> P2> diff  [ -c | -e | -C n ] [-br] file1 file2
> P2>
> P2>
> P2> 4.17.2  Description
> P2>
> P2> The diff utility shall compare the contents of file1 and file2 and write
> P2> to standard output a list of changes necessary to convert file1 into
> P2> file2. This list should be minimal.  No output shall be produced if the
>            ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> P2> files are identical.

Typical POSIX - Ambiguous as usual.  "should" != "must".  One could argue
that context diffs would fit in there depending on who is doing the
conversion - the minimum required for most humans to do a "conversion" is
-c format, see the PR database for examples.

Anyway, as much as I'd love to change the default, I'm sure somebody
somewhere will have something broken and/or take offence.

Cheers,
-Peter





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