redhat man page for combinediff

COMBINEDIFF(1)															    COMBINEDIFF(1)

NAME
       combinediff - create a cumulative unified patch from two incremental patches

SYNOPSIS
       combinediff [-p n] [-U n] [-d PAT] [-Bbiqwz]
		   [--interpolate | --combine] diff1 diff2

       combinediff {--help | --version}

DESCRIPTION
       combinediff  creates  a	unified  diff  that expresses the sum of two diffs. The diff files must be listed in the order that they are to be
       applied. For best results, the diffs must have at least three lines of context.

       The diffs may be in context format. The output, however, will be in unified format.

OPTIONS
       -p n   When comparing filenames, ignore the first n pathname components from both patches. (This  is  similar  to  the  -p  option  to  GNU
	      patch(1).)

       -q     Quieter output. Don't emit rationale lines at the beginning of each patch.

       -U n   Attempt  to display n lines of context (requires at least n lines of context in both input files). (This is similar to the -U option
	      to GNU diff(1).)

       -d pattern
	      Don't display any context on files that match the shell wildcard pattern. This option can be given multiple times.

	      Note that the interpretation of the shell wildcard pattern does not count slash characters or periods as special (in other words, no
	      flags  are given to fnmatch). This is so that ``*/basename''-type patterns can be given without limiting the number of pathname com-
	      ponents.

       -i     Consider upper- and lower-case to be the same.

       -w     Ignore whitespace changes in patches.

       -b     Ignore changes in the amount of whitespace.

       -B     Ignore changes whose lines are all blank.

       -z     Decompress files with extensions .gz and .bz2.

       --interpolate
	      Run as ``interdiff''. See combinediff(1) for more information about how the behaviour is altered in this mode.

       --combine
	      Run as ``combinediff''. This is the default.

       --help Display a short usage message.

       --version
	      Display the version number of combinediff.

BUGS
       The -U option is a bit erratic: it can control the amount of context displayed for files that are modified in both  patches,  but  not  for
       files that only appear in one patch (which appear with the same amount of context in the output as in the input).

SEE ALSO
       interdiff(1)

AUTHOR
       Tim Waugh <twaugh@redhat.com>.

patchutils							    17 Apr 2002 						    COMBINEDIFF(1)