Ubuntu – Run diff command to compare all files in directory

batchdiff()

I have two folders having in theory an identical folder structure and the same files.

I wish to check for differences between the two copies in the two folders. I can run diff folder1/file1 folder2/file1 one by one but this is time consuming.

Is there a way to identify which are the files which differ in the two folders? If not is there at least a way to compare the contents of a folder with the contents of the second folder?

Best Answer

You've missed the -r (recursive) option to diff:

diff -r folder1 folder2

For a concise output also add the -q flag; it will only output that the files differ, but doesn't output the actual differences. See the manpage (man 1 diff) for more information and options.

Related Solutions

Ubuntu – How to diff two folders to multiple patch files

You can use the original format that creates the huge diff file which you can subsequently split into the small files. You might be interested in csplit for the splitting, or you can use a scripting language like Perl:

perl -ne 'if(/^diff -drupN (.*) (.*)/) {
              my $f = $1;
              $f =~ s{/}{_}g;
              open $FH, ">", "$f.patch" or die $!;
          } else {
              print {$FH} $_;
          }' kernel.patch

If you need the diff line in each file, add the print after the open.

Ubuntu – How to diff the output of two commands

Command substitution `…` substitutes the output of the command into the command line, so diff sees the list of files in both directories as arguments. What you want is for diff to see two file names on its command line, and have the contents of these files be the directory listings. That's what process substitution does.

diff <(ls old) <(ls new)

The arguments to diff will look like /dev/fd/3 and /dev/fd/4: they are file descriptors corresponding to two pipes created by bash. When diff opens these files, it'll be connected to the read side of each pipe. The write side of each pipe is connected to the ls command.

Best Answer

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Ubuntu – How to diff two folders to multiple patch files

Ubuntu – How to diff the output of two commands

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