Provided by: fhist_1.18-2.1_amd64 
NAME
fcomp - file compare
SYNOPSIS
fcomp [ option... ] filename1 filename2
fcomp -Help
fcomp -VERSion
DESCRIPTION
The fcomp program is used to compare text files, similar to the diff(1) program. Its advantage is that
it always produces minimal differences, and so will never mis‐sync when comparing files. Its
disadvantage is that it runs slower due to the extra work required to produce optimal differences.
However, for files differing by less than a few thousand lines, its performance is adequate. The
algorithms used by this utility are also used by the fhist(1) program in order to produce the edit
history.
To compare file old to file new, the command:
fcomp old new
would be used. This gives the differences involved in converting from file old to file new. This is
analogous to the use of the cp(1) command. Either the old or new file may be a directory, in which case
the comparison is done to the file in the directory with the same name as the other file. An error is
given if old and new are both directories.
OPTIONS
The following options are understood:
-BINary This option may be used to compare binary files on a byte‐for‐byte basis. (Each byte is treated
as a “line” by the algorithm.) Byte values are displayed in hexadecimal, as are the addresses.
Note: this is different behaviour to the fhist(1) option of the same name.
-No_BINary
This option may be used to avoid comparing binary files. A warnign will be prointed on the
standard error, but the program will report success without printing andy other output.
-Blank
Ignore blank lines in the input files.
-Context number
This specifies the number of lines of "context" which is displayed. This shows the specified
number of lines before and after the actual lines being changed. This is useful to locate and
identify the line which is actually being changed, when there are many identical copies of the
line in the file.
-Edit
Output an edit script which is machine readable.
-Failures number
This stops the comparison if the number of changes exceeds the specified number. Each change is
a delete or insert of a single line. This is useful when you are not interested in the results
when the files are totally different. Another use is a quick check to see if two files are
identical, by using a value of zero.
-Help
Give some help on how to use the fcomp program.
-Join number
This merges together lines which have changed, if they are separated by up to the specified
number of unchanged lines. This makes a change look bigger, but reduces the "choppiness" of the
output by showing fewer regions being changed. This is particularly effective to suppress
worthless matchings of single blank lines or comment beginning and ending lines. A useful value
for this option is 3 or so.
-Matching
Output matching lines, rather then changed lines.
-Number
This outputs the line numbers at the left edge of the output. This isn't normally needed, since
the line numbers are displayed in the comment line preceding the lines being displayed. Not
outputting the line numbers prevents the terminal from needlessly scrolling for long lines.
-Output filename
Send the output to this file, rather than the standard output.
-Quiet
Output only a quick summary of changes needed.
-Spaces
This option ignores differences in the number of spaces in the two lines. That is, two or more
adjacent spaces are handled as a single space. Spaces at the beginning or end of a line are
totally ignored.
-Upcase
Uppercase lines before comparing.
-VERSion
Show what version of fcomp is running.
-What
This outputs all of both files together, showing what happened to each line of the first file in
order to change to the line in the second file. This output is in "change bar" format, where
inserted lines begin with |+, deleted lines begin with |−, and unchanged lines begin with spaces.
The presence of the vertical bar makes it easy to search for the changed lines.
All options may be abbreviated; the abbreviation is documented as the upper case letters, all lower case
letters and underscores (_) are optional. You must use consecutive sequences of optional letters.
All options are case insensitive, you may type them in upper case or lower case or a combination of both,
case is not important.
For example: the arguments "-help, "-HELP" and "-h" are all interpreted to mean the -Help option. The
argument "-hlp" will not be understood, because consecutive optional characters were not supplied.
Options and other command line arguments may be mixed arbitrarily on the command line.
The GNU long option names are understood. Since all option names for fcomp are long, this means ignoring
the extra leading '-'. The "-option=value" convention is also understood.
FILE NAME EXPANSION
As a convenience, if a pathname begins with a period and a environment variable exists with that name,
then the value of the environment variable will be used as the actual pathname. For example, if a
environment variable of .FOO has the value this.is.a.long.name, then the command
fcomp -o .FOO
is actually equivilant to the command
fcomp -o this.is.a.long.name
If you want to prevent the expansion of a pathname which begins with a period, then you can use an
alternate form for the pathname, as in:
fcomp -o ./.FOO
BINARY FILES
In general, fcomp can handle all text files you throw at it, even international text with unusual
encodings. However, fcomp is unable to cope elegantly with files which contain the NUL character.
The fcomp(1) program simply prints a warning, and continues, you need to know that it converts NUL
characters into an 0x80 value before performing the comparison.
The fmerge(1) program also converts the NUL character to an 0x80 value before merging, after a warning,
and any output file will contain this value, rather than the original NUL character.
The fhist(1) program, however, generates a fatal error if any input file contains NUL characters. This
is intended to protect your source files for unintentional corruption. Use -BINary for files which
absolutely must contain NUL characters.
EXIT STATUS
The fcomp program will exit with a status of 1 on any error. The fcomp program will only exit with a
status of 0 if there are no errors.
REFERENCES
This program is based on the algorithm in
An O(ND) Difference Algorithm and Its Variations, Eugene W. Myers, TR 85‐6, 10‐April‐1985,
Department of Computer Science, The University of Arizona, Tuscon, Arizona 85721.
See also:
A File Comparison Program, Webb Miller and Eugene W. Myers, Software Practice and Experience,
Volume 15, No. 11, November 1985.
COPYRIGHT
fcomp version 1.18.D001
Copyright (C) 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005,
2006, 2008, 2009 Peter Miller;
This program is derived from a work
Copyright (C) 1990 David I. Bell.
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU
General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 3 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even
the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public
License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program. If not, see
<http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
AUTHORS
Peter Miller Web: http://miller.emu.id.au/pmiller/
/\/\* E‐Mail: pmiller@opensource.org.au
David I. Bell Web: http://www.canb.auug.org.au/~dbell
E‐Mail: dbell@canb.auug.org.au
Reference Manual FHist fcomp(1)