Node:Detailed Unified, Next:, Up:Unified Format



Detailed Description of Unified Format

The unified output format starts with a two-line header, which looks like this:

--- from-file from-file-modification-time
+++ to-file to-file-modification-time

The time stamp looks like 2002-02-21 23:30:39.942229878 -0800 to indicate the date, time with fractional seconds, and time zone.

You can change the header's content with the --label=label option; see See Alternate Names.

Next come one or more hunks of differences; each hunk shows one area where the files differ. Unified format hunks look like this:

@@ from-file-range to-file-range @@
 line-from-either-file
 line-from-either-file...

The lines common to both files begin with a space character. The lines that actually differ between the two files have one of the following indicator characters in the left print column:

+
A line was added here to the first file.
-
A line was removed here from the first file.