NAME

       colordiff - a tool to colorize diff output

SYNOPSIS

       colordiff [diff options] [colordiff options] {file1} {file2}

DESCRIPTION

       colordiff is a wrapper for diff and produces the same output as diff but with coloured syntax
       highlighting at the command line to improve readability. The output is similar to how a diff-generated
       patch might appear in Vim or Emacs with the appropriate syntax highlighting options enabled. The colour
       schemes can be read from a central configuration file or from a local user ~/.colordiffrc file.

       colordiff makes use of ANSI colours and as such will only work when ANSI colours can be used - typical
       examples are xterms and Eterms, as well as console sessions.

       colordiff has been tested on various flavours of Linux and under OpenBSD, but should be broadly portable
       to other systems.

USAGE

       Use colordiff wherever you would normally use diff, or instead pipe output to colordiff:

       For example:

           $ colordiff file1 file2
           $ diff -u file1 file2 | colordiff

       You can pipe the output to 'less', using the '-R' option (some systems or terminal types may get better
       results using '-r' instead), which keeps the colour escape sequences, otherwise displayed incorrectly or
       discarded by 'less':

           $ diff -u file1 file2 | colordiff | less -R

       If you want to force disable colour escape sequences (for example pipe the output to patch), you can use
       option '--color=no' to do so:

           $ diff -u file1 file2 | colordiff --color=no | patch -p0 -d another-working-dir

       If you have wdiff installed, colordiff will correctly colourise the added and removed text, provided that
       the '-n' option is given to wdiff:

           $ wdiff -n file1 file2 | colordiff

       You may find it useful to make diff automatically call colordiff. Add the following line to ~/.bashrc (or
       equivalent):

           alias diff=colordiff

       Any options passed to colordiff are passed through to diff except for the colordiff-specific option
       'difftype', e.g.

           colordiff --difftype=debdiff file1 file2

       Valid values for 'difftype' are: diff, diffc, diffu, diffy, wdiff, debdiff; these correspond to plain
       diffs, context diffs, unified diffs, side-by-side diffs, wdiff output and debdiff output respectively.
       Use these overrides when colordiff is not able to determine the diff-type automatically.

       Alternatively, a construct such as 'cvs diff SOMETHING | colordiff' can be included in ~/.bashrc as
       follows:

           function cvsdiff () { cvs diff $@ | colordiff; }

       Or, combining the idea above using 'less':

           function cvsdiff () { cvs diff $@ | colordiff |less -R; }

       Note that the function name, cvsdiff, can be customized.

       By default colordiff returns the exit code of the underlying diff invocation (if there is one), but there
       are some circumstances where it is useful to force colordiff's exit code to be zero: to do this use the
       option '--fakeexitcode':

           colordiff --fakeexitcode ...

FILES

       /etc/colordiffrc
           Central configuration file. User-specific settings can be enabled by copying this file to
           ~/.colordiffrc and making the appropriate changes.

       colordiffrc-lightbg
           Alternate configuration template for use with terminals having light backgrounds. Copy this to
           /etc/colordiffrc or ~/.colordiffrc and customize.

       colordiffrc-gitdiff
           Alternate configuration template for use with terminals having dark backgrounds, with colour defaults
           set to match the output of 'git diff'. Copy this to /etc/colordiffrc or ~/.colordiffrc and customize.

BUGS

       Bug reports and suggestions/patches to davee@sungate.co.uk please.

AUTHORS

       Dave Ewart
           colordiff author and Debian packager

       Graham Wilson
           Manual page and XML source author

       Colin Tuckley
           Debian package sponsor