[Roland Stigge] > It would also be possible to return the differences-found state via a > return/exit value of the script. But that would diverge from common > practice (see e.g., diff(1)).
Heh - did you read diff(1)? diff *does* in fact return 1 iff any differences are found. So does cmp. grep is another good example (returns 0 iff any matches were found), which makes 'grep -q' very useful indeed. I favor the exit value approach (consistency with cmp and diff), but that *does* mean breaking an existing API that scripts may be depending on. I also favor eliminating the extra chatter, as you propose - either by default or with a -q|--quiet.
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