SysIII/usr/src/man/man1/bdiff.1

.TH BDIFF 1
.SH NAME
bdiff \- big diff
.SH SYNOPSIS
.B bdiff
file1 file2 [n]
.RB [ \-s ]
.SH DESCRIPTION
.I Bdiff\^
is used in a manner analogous to
.IR diff (1)
to find which lines must be changed in two files to bring them
into agreement.
Its purpose is to allow processing of files which are too large
for
.IR diff .
.I Bdiff\^
ignores lines common to the beginning of both files,
splits the remainder of each file into
.IR n -line
segments, and invokes
.I diff\^
upon corresponding segments.
The value of
.I n\^
is 3500 by default.
If the optional third argument is given, and it is
numeric, it is used as the value for
.IR n .
This is useful in those cases in which 3500-line segments are
too large for
.IR diff ,
causing it to fail.
If
.I file1\^
.RI ( file2 )
is \fB\-\fR,
the standard input is read.
The optional
.B \-s
(silent) argument specifies that
no diagnostics are to be printed by
.I bdiff\^
(note, however, that this does not suppress possible exclamations by
.IR diff .
If both optional arguments are specified, they must appear in the
order indicated above.
.PP
The output of
.I bdiff\^
is exactly that of
.IR diff ,
with line numbers adjusted to account for the segmenting of the files
(that is, to make it look as if the files had been processed
whole).
Note that
because of the segmenting of the files,
.I bdiff\^
does not necessarily find a
smallest sufficient set of file differences.
.SH FILES
/tmp/bd?????
.SH "SEE ALSO"
diff(1).
.SH DIAGNOSTICS
Use
.IR help (1)
for explanations.