NAME
fcomp - file compare
SYNOPSIS
fcomp [ option... ] filename1 filename2
fcomp -Help
fcomp -VERSion
DESCRIPTION
The fcomp program is used to compare text files, similar to the diff(1)
program. Its advantage is that it always produces minimal differences,
and so will never mis‐sync when comparing files. Its disadvantage is
that it runs slower due to the extra work required to produce optimal
differences. However, for files differing by less than a few thousand
lines, its performance is adequate. The algorithms used by this
utility are also used by the fhist(1) program in order to produce the
edit history.
To compare file old to file new, the command:
fcomp old new
would be used. This gives the differences involved in converting from
file old to file new. This is analogous to the use of the cp(1)
command. Either the old or new file may be a directory, in which case
the comparison is done to the file in the directory with the same name
as the other file. An error is given if old and new are both
directories.
OPTIONS
The following options are understood:
-BINary This option may be used to compare binary files on a
byte‐for‐byte basis. (Each byte is treated as a “line” by the
algorithm.) Byte values are displayed in hexadecimal, as are
the addresses. Note: this is different behaviour to the
fhist(1) option of the same name.
-No_BINary
This option may be used to avoid comparing binary files. A
warnign will be prointed on the standard error, but the program
will report success without printing andy other output.
-Blank
Ignore blank lines in the input files.
-Context number
This specifies the number of lines of "context" which is
displayed. This shows the specified number of lines before and
after the actual lines being changed. This is useful to locate
and identify the line which is actually being changed, when
there are many identical copies of the line in the file.
-Edit
Output an edit script which is machine readable.
-Failures number
This stops the comparison if the number of changes exceeds the
specified number. Each change is a delete or insert of a
single line. This is useful when you are not interested in the
results when the files are totally different. Another use is a
quick check to see if two files are identical, by using a value
of zero.
-Help
Give some help on how to use the fcomp program.
-Join number
This merges together lines which have changed, if they are
separated by up to the specified number of unchanged lines.
This makes a change look bigger, but reduces the "choppiness"
of the output by showing fewer regions being changed. This is
particularly effective to suppress worthless matchings of
single blank lines or comment beginning and ending lines. A
useful value for this option is 3 or so.
-Matching
Output matching lines, rather then changed lines.
-Number
This outputs the line numbers at the left edge of the output.
This isn’t normally needed, since the line numbers are
displayed in the comment line preceding the lines being
displayed. Not outputting the line numbers prevents the
terminal from needlessly scrolling for long lines.
-Output filename
Send the output to this file, rather than the standard output.
-Quiet
Output only a quick summary of changes needed.
-Spaces
This option ignores differences in the number of spaces in the
two lines. That is, two or more adjacent spaces are handled as
a single space. Spaces at the beginning or end of a line are
totally ignored.
-Upcase
Uppercase lines before comparing.
-VERSion
Show what version of fcomp is running.
-What
This outputs all of both files together, showing what happened
to each line of the first file in order to change to the line
in the second file. This output is in "change bar" format,
where inserted lines begin with |+, deleted lines begin with
|−, and unchanged lines begin with spaces. The presence of the
vertical bar makes it easy to search for the changed lines.
All options may be abbreviated; the abbreviation is documented as the
upper case letters, all lower case letters and underscores (_) are
optional. You must use consecutive sequences of optional letters.
All options are case insensitive, you may type them in upper case or
lower case or a combination of both, case is not important.
For example: the arguments "-help, "-HELP" and "-h" are all interpreted
to mean the -Help option. The argument "-hlp" will not be understood,
because consecutive optional characters were not supplied.
Options and other command line arguments may be mixed arbitrarily on
the command line.
The GNU long option names are understood. Since all option names for
fcomp are long, this means ignoring the extra leading ’-’. The
"-option=value" convention is also understood.
FILE NAME EXPANSION
As a convenience, if a pathname begins with a period and a environment
variable exists with that name, then the value of the environment
variable will be used as the actual pathname. For example, if a
environment variable of .FOO has the value this.is.a.long.name, then
the command
fcomp -o .FOO
is actually equivilant to the command
fcomp -o this.is.a.long.name
If you want to prevent the expansion of a pathname which begins with a
period, then you can use an alternate form for the pathname, as in:
fcomp -o ./.FOO
BINARY FILES
In general, fcomp can handle all text files you throw at it, even
international text with unusual encodings. However, fcomp is unable to
cope elegantly with files which contain the NUL character.
The fcomp(1) program simply prints a warning, and continues, you need
to know that it converts NUL characters into an 0x80 value before
performing the comparison.
The fmerge(1) program also converts the NUL character to an 0x80 value
before merging, after a warning, and any output file will contain this
value, rather than the original NUL character.
The fhist(1) program, however, generates a fatal error if any input
file contains NUL characters. This is intended to protect your source
files for unintentional corruption. Use -BINary for files which
absolutely must contain NUL characters.
EXIT STATUS
The fcomp program will exit with a status of 1 on any error. The fcomp
program will only exit with a status of 0 if there are no errors.
REFERENCES
This program is based on the algorithm in
An O(ND) Difference Algorithm and Its Variations, Eugene W.
Myers, TR 85‐6, 10‐April‐1985, Department of Computer Science,
The University of Arizona, Tuscon, Arizona 85721.
See also:
A File Comparison Program, Webb Miller and Eugene W. Myers,
Software Practice and Experience, Volume 15, No. 11, November
1985.
COPYRIGHT
fcomp version 1.18.D001
Copyright (C) 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999,
2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2008, 2009 Peter Miller;
This program is derived from a work
Copyright (C) 1990 David I. Bell.
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the
Free Software Foundation; either version 3 of the License, or (at your
option) any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU
General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along
with this program. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
AUTHORS
Peter Miller Web: http://miller.emu.id.au/pmiller/
/\/\* E‐Mail: pmiller@opensource.org.au
David I. Bell Web: http://www.canb.auug.org.au/~dbell
E‐Mail: dbell@canb.auug.org.au