Re: Diff too difficult

[Alfred M. Szmidt]

   I don't need a pretty graphical display, but I would like the
   output to be improved.

The output from diff is quite easy to understand both for humans, and
for machines (GNU patch reads a diff, and applies it to the source
code for example).  GNU diff can output many formats, depending on
what is easier to grok for a specific task, unified diff's (-u) are
nice for source code, side-by-side diff's (-y) are wonderful for text.
The GNU diff manual has a clear description on how to read both these
formats, including the default one, and some other formats that I
don't remeber.

For unified diffs you cannot get a format that is simpler, a + means
an added line, a - means a removed line, and anything else is simply
not touched.  The manual for diff ((diff)Detailed Unified) describes
this quite well.