Node:
Imperfect,
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Merging with patch
Applying Imperfect Patches
patch
tries to skip any leading text in the patch file,
apply the diff, and then skip any trailing text. Thus you can feed a
mail message directly to patch
, and it should work. If the
entire diff is indented by a constant amount of white space,
patch
automatically ignores the indentation. If a context
diff contains trailing carriage return on each line, patch
automatically ignores the carriage return. If a context diff has been
encapsulated by prepending -
to lines beginning with -
as per Internet RFC 934,
patch
automatically unencapsulates the input.
However, certain other types of imperfect input require user
intervention or testing.