Re: [bug-diffutils] Bug#514893: cmp: please allow comparing multiple files (fwd)

[Jim Meyering]

Santiago Vila wrote:
> A long time ago, I received this from the Debian bug system.
>
> [ I realize that this is unlikely to be implemented, but I am supposed
> to forward upstream bugs upstream in either case ].

Thanks for forwarding that.
However, I'll bet you can do something similar with od and a program
that can show differences in 3 files.  Here's how you can come close
using only two inputs with sdiff:

    $ f() { od -Anone -w1 -v -tc "$@"; }
    $ sdiff -w14 <(printf 'a\x06\xff\n'|f) <(printf 'a\x05\xff\n'|f)
       a       a
     006  |  005
     377     377
      \n      \n
    [Exit 1]

> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Michael Stransky <address@hidden>
> To: Debian Bug Tracking System <address@hidden>
> Date: Wed, 11 Feb 2009 19:26:52 +0100
> Subject: cmp: please allow comparing multiple files
>
> Package: diff
> Version: 2.8.1-11
> Severity: wishlist
>
>
> It would be great if cmp could handle more then 2 files.
> cmp -c file1 file2 file3 would output for example:
> (byte file1 file2 file3)
> 1 100 101 102
> 2 100 100 101
> 7 100 101 102
> cmp: EOF on file2.
> 9 100     102
> cmp: EOF on file3.