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File and directory comparison tool?

Is there any software available on Ubuntu12.04 to compare two gedit text files for the differences between them. I have two CSS text files with me that i want to compare for the difference.

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2 Answers 2

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The classical Un*x way of doing that is diff:

diff file1 file2

A more visual way for vim users is to do vimdiff:

vimdiff file1 file2

Finally, there is diffuse:

sudo apt-get install diffuse
diffuse file1 file2

Here is an example diffuse window:

enter image description here

You clearly see the differences between the two text files. Using the blue arrows on the top that go up or down you can move between the differences found. The blue arrows on the top that go left and right can be used to move the text from left to right and the other way round. The icons with two little blue arrows are used to merging the two files.

If you double click, you can directly edit the text.

Just to make life more interesting, you will get an upvote if you guess correctly what is this data in the above picture :-)

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  • can you please elaborate more on visual way?? Sep 20, 2012 at 9:41
  • in these commands both file1 and file2 need to be in the same directory or i can give file1path fil2path? Sep 20, 2012 at 9:43
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    Sure, you can always add the path. Whenever you need a file argument, you can specify the file with the full or partial path.
    – January
    Sep 20, 2012 at 9:49
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    Nope. This is a list of people who have estimated the value of Pi, with the respective year and estimate. As for remote access: I usually mount the remotes using sshfs or some other tool like that, so I can work with the remote files as if they were local. Or use rsync.
    – January
    Sep 20, 2012 at 10:26
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    If you access your remote files using ssh, you can mount the target using sshfs: sshfs username@server ~/localdir and presto, you can edit files in ~/localdir as if they were local. rsync: you have a copy of your target directory (eg. website) locally. You do all the edits locally, and then run rsync -azv /path/to/localdir/ username@server:/path/to/targetdir/
    – January
    Sep 20, 2012 at 11:05
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There is Meld Diff Viewer. Meld is a graphical user interface tool for comparing text files and their contents. You can find instructions on how to install and use it here.

There is also the command line tool diff

Diff syntax:

diff first_file_to_compare second_file_to_compare

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