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White Space,
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Blank Lines,
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Comparison
Suppressing Differences in Blank and Tab Spacing
The -E and --ignore-tab-expansion options ignore the
distinction between tabs and spaces on input. A tab is considered to be
equivalent to the number of spaces to the next tab stop. diff
assumes that tab stops are set every 8 print columns.
The -b and --ignore-space-change options are stronger.
They ignore white space at line end, and consider all other sequences of
one or more white space characters to be equivalent. With these
options, diff considers the following two lines to be equivalent,
where $ denotes the line end:
Here lyeth muche rychnesse in lytell space. -- John Heywood$
Here lyeth muche rychnesse in lytell space. -- John Heywood $
The -w and --ignore-all-space options are stronger still.
They ignore difference even if one line has white space where
the other line has none. White space characters include
tab, newline, vertical tab, form feed, carriage return, and space;
some locales may define additional characters to be white space.
With these options, diff considers the
following two lines to be equivalent, where $ denotes the line
end and ^M denotes a carriage return:
Here lyeth muche rychnesse in lytell space.-- John Heywood$
He relyeth much erychnes seinly tells pace. --John Heywood ^M$
