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Diffutils patch regarding special files
From: |
Jason Todd |
Subject: |
Diffutils patch regarding special files |
Date: |
Tue, 11 Nov 2008 18:15:01 -0500 (EST) |
Hi,
I have put together the attached simple patch for diff.c of the Diffutils
package (specifically version 2.8.1). This patch suppresses the messages
(and failure exit status) when non-regular files are encountered during
recursive comparisons, if the "-Q" or "--ignore_special" command line
arguments are given. Examples of the suppressed messages are:
File original/dev/char1-3 is a character special file while file
test1/dev/char1-3 is a character special file
File original/misc/a-fifo is a fifo while file test1/misc/a-fifo is a fifo
File original/misc/a-socket is a socket while file test1/misc/a-socket is
a fifo
Instead, the patch looks a little further, and if the files are of the
same type and are not device files, it considers them a match. In the
case of device files, if they are of the same type (block or character)
and refer to the same device (via stat.st_rdev), then it considers them a
match.
When comparing two complete filesystems, or large portions of them (which
I do a lot), these messages tend to get in the way. Broken symlinks,
which are common in almost every distribution, are still reported, but
those messages I am willing to filter outside of diff.
I can submit a larger patch that includes the relevant changes to the
documentation supplied with Diffutils, if you would like. Further, I can
update and re-package everything as diffutils-2.8.2 if you would like (but
I don't want to intrude too much). Just let me know.
Thanks,
Jason Todd
diff-ignore_special.patch
Description: Text document
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