Hello! First of all, I think that diffutils are great! I also have 2 suggestions to make them *awesome*. I also don't think they would need much modification and would be easy to implement.
BACKGROUND I came across this while using sdiff on my configuration files. I noticed that sdiff compares 2 files in chunks. My situation was this: I was aiming to make a third file from 2 files where I could interactively chose which of the diffrences (left of right) I would like in the new file. I ran sdiff like this: sdiff -o /tmp/outfile /etc/newfile /etc/oldfile Somewhere along the process I basically had 3 consequent lines that were all either new or different. I wanted to keep the first and the third line from the old file but include the second line from the new file. I could not do that (I even tried the -d flag) and the best i could achieve was to include all the 3 lines and then remove the second line from the new /tmp/outputfile file. IDEA At that moment, it occured to me, that if sdiff processed a text file line by line, I could have achieved this. SUGGESTION 1 I suggest implementing a new flag for line-by-line processing, where a user has the ability to decide on each individual line that differs. SUGGESTION 2 Somtimes, you have 2 different lines where 1 line suits you more than the other, but still needs tome modification. In such a case, it would be useful to have an option to edit just that one line and then return to the interactive sdiff process. This could be something as simple as a prompt with the pasted line a user selected (either left or right) as their base line.... then one could move back and forth with cursor keys and insert/delete the text they wanted. After pressing enter, they would return to the differential compharison and proceed. I think this would be a most excelelnt addition to the diff utility and come in very handy on a daily basis. Please inplement this function as it would be greatly beneficial. Best regards, Jan Rome
