diffutils: Which Changes
8.1 Selecting Which Changes to Incorporate
==========================================
You can select all unmerged changes from OLDER to YOURS for merging into
MINE with the '--ed' ('-e') option. You can select only the
nonoverlapping unmerged changes with '--easy-only' ('-3'), and you can
select only the overlapping changes with '--overlap-only' ('-x').
The '-e', '-3' and '-x' options select only "unmerged changes", i.e.
changes where MINE and YOURS differ; they ignore changes from OLDER to
YOURS where MINE and YOURS are identical, because they assume that such
changes have already been merged. If this assumption is not a safe one,
you can use the '--show-all' ('-A') option (⇒Marking Conflicts).
Here is the output of the command 'diff3' with each of these three
options (⇒Sample diff3 Input, for the complete contents of the
files). Notice that '-e' outputs the union of the disjoint sets of
changes output by '-3' and '-x'.
Output of 'diff3 -e lao tzu tao':
11a
-- The Way of Lao-Tzu, tr. Wing-tsit Chan
.
8c
so we may see their result.
.
Output of 'diff3 -3 lao tzu tao':
8c
so we may see their result.
.
Output of 'diff3 -x lao tzu tao':
11a
-- The Way of Lao-Tzu, tr. Wing-tsit Chan
.