colordiff is a wrapper for diff and produces the same output as diff but with coloured syntax highlighting at the command line to improve readability.
The output is similar to how a diff-generated patch might appear in Vim or Emacs with the appropriate syntax highlighting options enabled.
The colour schemes can be read from a central configuration file or from a local user ~/.colordiffrc file.
colordiff makes use of ANSI colours and as such will only work when ANSI colours can be used – typical examples are xterms and Eterms, as well as console sessions. You can pipe the output to ‘less’, using the ‘-R’ option.
Use colordiff wherever you would normally use diff, or instead pipe output to colordiff. Diffs generated by Subversion are recognised, in addition to plain diffs and CVS diffs.
There’s support for side-by-side diffs, Wdiff colourising, and dark colours.
Website: www.colordiff.org
Support: Mailing List, GitHub Code Repository
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.
Return to Console-Based Diff Tools Home Page
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