Re: Diff too difficult

[Alfred M. Szmidt]

   One file had a blank line after </body> and it wasn't indicated
   clearly enough, if at all.

If you'd dump the diff to a new file, you'd see the change if you
opened it up in a text editor that can show white-spaces at the end of
a line etc (emacs can do this with whitespace-mode or somesuch).

   There was no line number mentioned,

Actually, there was.  the "61d60" was your line number. (diff)Detailed
Normal:

`RdL'
     Delete the lines in range R from the first file; line L is where
     they would have appeared in the second file had they not been
     deleted.  For example, `5,7d3' means delete lines 5-7 of file 1;
     or, if changing file 2 into file 1, append lines 5-7 of file 1
     after line 3 of file 2.

   I don't think lines that are thousands of characters long should be
   output by default just for accuracy.

Of course they should if the files contain such long lines, that is
after all the difference between the two files.

   The "@@ -58,5 +58,4 @@" is confusing. There's also no indication of
   which file is missing the blank line between the two closing tags.

Because the +++/--- stuff tells you which file.  @@...@@ tells you
which part of that file you are looking at (in this case, line 58).
Once again this should all be in the manual.

   I only tried "help sdiff" which wasn't available.

You should have tried `info diff'.

   > Really, this is all documented in the manual.  Before you reply
   > to this message, read the diff manual, please.

   I'm sure that would help. It's just that I'd like it to be easier.

It is easy, just read it, it takes 5 minutes, you spent more time
writting this mail, and I spent more time explaining what the output
means.