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 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.

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.

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