Editing Diff (section)

=== Formatters and front-ends ===

Postprocessors '''sdiff''' and '''diffmk''' render side-by-side diff listings and applied change marks to printed documents, respectively. Both were developed elsewhere in Bell Labs in or before 1981.{{citation needed|date=February 2015}}{{discuss|topicality of front-ends}}

[[Diff3]] compares one file against two other files by reconciling two diffs. It was originally conceived by Paul Jensen to reconcile changes made by two people editing a common source. It is also used by revision control systems, e.g. [[Revision Control System|RCS]], for [[merge (revision control)|merging]].<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.gnu.org/software/rcs/manual/html_node/merge.html|title=merge (GNU RCS 5.10.0)|website=gnu.org|access-date=22 January 2021|archive-date=18 September 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190918125803/http://www.gnu.org/software/rcs/manual/html_node/merge.html|url-status=live}}</ref>

[[Emacs]] has [[Ediff]] for showing the changes a patch would provide in a user interface that combines interactive editing and merging capabilities for patch files.

[[Vim (text editor)|Vim]] provides '''vimdiff''' to compare from two to eight files, with differences highlighted in color.<ref>{{Cite web|author-link=Bram Moolenaar|first=Bram|last=Moolenaar|url=https://vimhelp.org/diff.txt.html#vimdiff|title=Vim documentation: diff|website=vimdoc.sourceforge.net|access-date=1 May 2020|quote=The easiest way to start editing in diff mode is with the "vimdiff" command. This starts Vim as usual, and additionally sets up for viewing the differences between the arguments. <code>vimdiff file1 file2 [file3] [file4] [...file8]</code> This is equivalent to: <code>vim -d file1 file2 [file3] [file4] [...file8]</code>|archive-date=16 February 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200216203940/https://vimhelp.org/diff.txt.html#vimdiff|url-status=live}}</ref>  While historically invoking the diff program, modern vim uses [[git]]'s fork of xdiff library (LibXDiff) code, providing improved speed and functionality.<ref name="brabandt2018">{{Cite web|title=The power of diff|url=https://vimways.org/2018/the-power-of-diff/|date=1 December 2018|website=Vimways|access-date=1 May 2020|first=Christian |last=Brabandt|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181202020105/https://vimways.org/2018/the-power-of-diff/|archive-date=2 December 2018}}</ref>

GNU [[Wdiff]]<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.gnu.org/software/wdiff/wdiff.html|title=gnu.org|website=www.gnu.org|access-date=2020-09-12|archive-date=2020-08-11|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200811124535/https://www.gnu.org/software/wdiff/wdiff.html|url-status=live}}</ref> is a front end to diff that shows the words or phrases that changed in a text document of written language even in the presence of word-wrapping or different column widths.

colordiff is a Perl wrapper for 'diff' and produces the same output but with colorization for added and deleted bits.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.colordiff.org/|title=colordiff|website=www.colordiff.org|access-date=2018-06-14|archive-date=2018-06-14|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180614121429/https://www.colordiff.org/|url-status=live}}</ref> diff-so-fancy and diff-highlight are newer analogues.<ref>{{cite web |title=diff-so-fancy |url=https://github.com/so-fancy/diff-so-fancy |publisher=So Fancy |date=6 May 2023}}</ref> "delta" is a Rust rewrite that highlights changes and the underlying code at the same time.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Davison |first1=Dan |title=dandavison/delta |website=[[GitHub]] |url=https://github.com/dandavison/delta |date=8 May 2023}}</ref>

'''Patchutils''' contains tools that combine, rearrange, compare and fix context diffs and unified diffs.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Waugh |first1=Tim |title=twaugh/patchutils |website=[[GitHub]] |url=https://github.com/twaugh/patchutils |date=12 June 2020 |access-date=28 June 2020 |archive-date=1 October 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201001234609/https://github.com/twaugh/patchutils |url-status=live }}</ref>