On Tue, 17 Dec 2019 12:16:38 -0600, Paul Gilmartin wrote
>
>I believe POSIX requires text files, ...
>
I was undeservedly kind to IBM. In:
The Open Group Base Specifications Issue 7, 2018 edition
IEEE Std 1003.1-2017 (Revision of IEEE Std 1003.1-2008)
Copyright © 2001-2018 IEEE and The Open Group
https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/diff.html#tag_20_34_07
....
INPUT FILES
The input files may be of any type.
....
Diff Binary Output Format
In the POSIX locale, if one or both of the files being compared are not
text files,
it is implementation-defined whether diff uses the binary file output
format or
the other formats as specified ...
It's worth an RFE that IBM upgrade diff to conformance with POSIX 2018.
(I note that document also specifies the valuable "diff -u".)
-- gil
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