UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hello all
i wander what is the best way to make diff between 2 directories and perform diff of 2 kinds
the first is the names of the files on each directory , and the second diff is between the content of
each file and the corresponding file and the second dir.

Thanks for the help

Ok, while there are MANY ways to do so, let me suggest you some simplest:
First “diff” supposed to differentiate between files, so you may wish dump the output of the directories in the files first:

Like “ls -1 > file1” in one directory and “ls -1 > file2” in another directory. Option “-1” instructs ls to format output one name per line as it will make it more convenient for our use. So then you can use “diff file1 file2”.
As you want to compare the content of the files in the directories, the simplest is to dump the files from the first directory into one file and files from another directory into another.
To do so you can use command “xargs” as it creates list of parameters: “cat file1 | xargs cat > filedir1” . You can use < instead of the first “cat” in the line. You then do the same with a second file you have created and then you can run diff for these two new files and account for a differences in file content. I hope it is what you have been asking for.
Get “UNIX in 24 hours” or “UNIX Essentials and UNIX Core” DVD if you have questions of this sort.

Hope it helps.

If you prefer an interactive GUI tool to examine diffs, you can always try tools such as meld, kdiff3 and kompare.

For text-based diffs, for filename diffs you can always do a

ls -R dir1 >TXT1
ls -R dir2 >TXT2
diff -u TXT1 TXT2

For content diff you can do

diff -Naur dir1 dir2

diff -Naur dir1 dir2
seams not to work in sparc SUNW,Sun-Fire-V490 ...

Probably. What about just

diff -r dir1 dir2

?

wat if you only want to list the files in dir1 or dir2 which are similar in name, but differ in content rather than the actual diff output?