| NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | AUTHOR | REPORTING BUGS | COPYRIGHT | SEE ALSO | COLOPHON | |
|  | 
DIFF3(1)                      User Commands                      DIFF3(1)
       diff3 - compare three files line by line
       diff3 [OPTION]... MYFILE OLDFILE YOURFILE
       Compare three files line by line.
       Mandatory arguments to long options are mandatory for short
       options too.
       -A, --show-all
              output all changes, bracketing conflicts
       -e, --ed
              output ed script incorporating changes from OLDFILE to
              YOURFILE into MYFILE
       -E, --show-overlap
              like -e, but bracket conflicts
       -3, --easy-only
              like -e, but incorporate only nonoverlapping changes
       -x, --overlap-only
              like -e, but incorporate only overlapping changes
       -X     like -x, but bracket conflicts
       -i     append 'w' and 'q' commands to ed scripts
       -m, --merge
              output actual merged file, according to -A if no other
              options are given
       -a, --text
              treat all files as text
       --strip-trailing-cr
              strip trailing carriage return on input
       -T, --initial-tab
              make tabs line up by prepending a tab
       --diff-program=PROGRAM
              use PROGRAM to compare files
       -L, --label=LABEL
              use LABEL instead of file name (can be repeated up to three
              times)
       --help display this help and exit
       -v, --version
              output version information and exit
       The default output format is a somewhat human-readable
       representation of the changes.
       The -e, -E, -x, -X (and corresponding long) options cause an ed
       script to be output instead of the default.
       Finally, the -m (--merge) option causes diff3 to do the merge
       internally and output the actual merged file.  For unusual input,
       this is more robust than using ed.
       If a FILE is '-', read standard input.  Exit status is 0 if
       successful, 1 if conflicts, 2 if trouble.
       Written by Randy Smith.
       Report bugs to: bug-diffutils@gnu.org
       GNU diffutils home page: <https://www.gnu.org/software/diffutils/>
       General help using GNU software: <https://www.gnu.org/gethelp/>
       Copyright © 2025 Free Software Foundation, Inc.  License GPLv3+:
       GNU GPL version 3 or later <https://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>.
       This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.
       There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.
       cmp(1), diff(1), sdiff(1)
       The full documentation for diff3 is maintained as a Texinfo
       manual.  If the info and diff3 programs are properly installed at
       your site, the command
              info diff3
       should give you access to the complete manual.
       This page is part of the diffutils (GNU diff utilities) project.
       Information about the project can be found at 
       ⟨http://savannah.gnu.org/projects/diffutils/⟩.  If you have a bug
       report for this manual page, send it to bug-diffutils@gnu.org.
       This page was obtained from the project's upstream Git repository
       ⟨git://git.savannah.gnu.org/diffutils.git⟩ on 2025-08-11.  (At
       that time, the date of the most recent commit that was found in
       the repository was 2025-04-27.)  If you discover any rendering
       problems in this HTML version of the page, or you believe there is
       a better or more up-to-date source for the page, or you have
       corrections or improvements to the information in this COLOPHON
       (which is not part of the original manual page), send a mail to
       man-pages@man7.org
diffutils 3.12.8-2591          August 2025                       DIFF3(1)
Pages that refer to this page: cmp(1), diff(1), patch(1), sdiff(1)