diff files while disregarding indentation and trailing white space

diff -b $file1 $file2 # GNU Tools

By: Tekhne

2010-10-06 20:50:03

diff diff

1 Alternatives + Submit Alt

diff files while disregarding indentation and trailing white space

**NOTE** Tekhne's alternative is much more succinct and its output conforms to the files actual contents rather than with white space removed My command on the other hand uses bash process substitution (and "Minimal" Perl), instead of files, to first remove leading and trailing white space from lines, before diff'ing the streams. Very useful when differences in indentation, such as in programming source code files, may be irrelevant Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
gjempty$ diff <(perl -wpl -e '$_ =~ s/^\s+|\s+$//g ;' file1) <(perl -wpl -e '$_ =~ s/^\s+|\s+$//g ;' file2)
247a248,250
> for ($i = 0; $i < 7; $i++) {
> if (!isset($tabData[$i])) $tabData[$i] = '';
> }

gjempty$ diff -b file1 file2
247a248,250
>                         for ($i = 0; $i < 7; $i++) {
>                             if (!isset($tabData[$i])) $tabData[$i] = '';
>                         }
```
2

diff <(perl -wpl -e '$_ =~ s/^\s+|\s+$//g ;' file1) <(perl -wpl -e '$_ =~ s/^\s+|\s+$//g ;' file2)

jemptymethod · 2010-10-06 19:14:42 6

What Others Think

I'm going to try this when I get to work tomorrow. I wanted to learn how to use perl on the command line anyway though.

jemptymethod · 726 weeks and 5 days ago

definitely better

jemptymethod · 726 weeks and 4 days ago

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Perfecthomepugs · 97 weeks ago

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yeneba6574 · 14 weeks ago

What do you think?

Any thoughts on this command? Does it work on your machine? Can you do the same thing with only 14 characters?

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