bsd man page for diff3

DIFF3(1)						      General Commands Manual							  DIFF3(1)

NAME
       diff3 - 3-way differential file comparison

SYNOPSIS
       diff3 [ -exEX3 ] file1 file2 file3

DESCRIPTION
       Diff3 compares three versions of a file, and publishes disagreeing ranges of text flagged with these codes:

       ====	       all three files differ

       ====1	       file1 is different

       ====2	       file2 is different

       ====3	       file3 is different

       The type of change suffered in converting a given range of a given file to some other is indicated in one of these ways:

       f : n1 a        Text is to be appended after line number n1 in file f, where f = 1, 2, or 3.

       f : n1 , n2 c   Text is to be changed in the range line n1 to line n2.  If n1 = n2, the range may be abbreviated to n1.

       The original contents of the range follows immediately after a c indication.  When the contents of two files are identical, the contents of
       the lower-numbered file is suppressed.

       Under the -e option, diff3 publishes a script for the editor ed that will incorporate into file1 all changes between file2 and file3,  i.e.
       the  changes  that  normally  would  be	flagged ==== and ====3.  Option -x (-3) produces a script to incorporate only changes flagged ====
       (====3).  The following command will apply the resulting script to `file1'.

		(cat script; echo '1,$p') | ed - file1

       The -E and -X are similar to -e and -x, respectively, but treat overlapping changes (i.e., changes that would be flagged with ====  in  the
       normal listing) differently.  The overlapping lines from both files will be inserted by the edit script, bracketed by "<<<<<<" and ">>>>>>"
       lines.

       For example, suppose lines 7-8 are changed in both file1 and file2.  Applying the edit script generated by the command
							      "diff3 -E file1 file2 file3"
       to file1 results in the file:

	      lines 1-6
	      of file1
	      <<<<<<< file1
	      lines 7-8
	      of file1
	      =======
	      lines 7-8
	      of file3
	      >>>>>>> file3
	      rest of file1

       The -E option is used by RCS merge(1) to insure that overlapping changes in the merged files are preserved and brought to someone's  atten-
       tion.

FILES
       /tmp/d3?????
       /usr/libexec/diff3

SEE ALSO
       diff(1)

BUGS
       Text lines that consist of a single `.' will defeat -e.

7th Edition							 October 21, 1996							  DIFF3(1)