colordiff wraps the standard diff utility and adds colour highlighting while retaining diff’s familiar output and command-line behaviour. It is intended to make patches and comparisons easier to scan without requiring users to adopt a different comparison tool or output format.
The utility can be invoked wherever diff would normally be used or placed later in a pipeline to colourise existing diff output. Colour rules can be configured globally or per user.
This is free and open source software.
Key Features
- Passes ordinary diff options through to the underlying diff utility.
- Adds ANSI colour highlighting while preserving the structure of the original comparison.
- Handles plain, context, unified and side-by-side diff formats.
- Recognises wdiff output and can colourise added and removed words.
- Supports Debian-style diffs in addition to common diff formats.
- Can automatically determine the input diff type or be told explicitly which format to expect.
- Supports central configuration and per-user settings through a colordiff configuration file.
- Allows colours for different elements of the diff to be customised.
- Supports standard named colours as well as extended terminal colour configurations.
- Can disable colour escape sequences when its output needs to be passed to another program such as patch.
- Works well with terminal pagers such as less when colour-preserving options are enabled.
- Can be aliased to diff for users who want coloured comparisons by default.
- Handles file and directory comparisons supported by the underlying diff implementation.
Website: github.com/daveewart/colordiff
Support:
Developer: Dave Ewart
License: GNU General Public License v2.0
colordiff is written in Perl. Learn Perl with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
Related Software
| Terminal-Based Diff Tools | |
|---|---|
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