A European Informational Website
learn more
In computing, <tt>diff</tt> is a file comparison utility that outputs the differences between two files. The program displays the changes made per line for text files. Modern implementations also support binary files.[1] The output is called a diff or more commonly a patch since the output can be applied with the program <tt>patch</tt>. The output of similar file comparison utilities are also called a "diff". Like the use of the word "grep" for describing the act of searching, the word diff is used in jargon as a verb for calculating any difference.