Given two directory trees how can I find out which files differ by content

Question

If I want find the differences between two directory trees  I usually just execute   diff -r dir1  dir2    This outputs exactly what the differences are between corresponding files   I m interested in just getting a list of corresponding files whose content differs   I assumed that this would simply be a matter of passing a command line option to diff  but I couldn t find anything on the man page   Any suggestions

User · Accepted Answer

You said Linux  so you luck out  at least it should be available  not sure when it was added    diff --brief --recursive dir1  dir2    GNU long options diff -qr dir1  dir2    common short options   Should do what you need   If you also want to see differences for files that may not exist in either directory   diff --brief --recursive --new-file dir1  dir2    GNU long options diff -qrN dir1  dir2    common short options

User · Answer

These two commands do basically the thing asked for   diff --brief --recursive --no-dereference --new-file --no-ignore-file-name-case  dir1  dir2  gt  dirdiff 1 txt  rsync --recursive --delete --links --checksum --verbose --dry-run  dir1   dir2   gt  dirdiff 2 txt   The choice between them depends on the location of dir1 and dir2   When the directories reside on two seperate drives  diff outperforms rsync  But when the two directories compared are on the same drive  rsync is faster  It s because diff puts an almost equal load on both directories in parallel  maximizing load on the two drives   rsync calculates checksums in large chunks before actually comparing them  That groups the i o operations in large chunks and leads to a more efficient processing when things take place on a single drive

User · Answer

Channel compatriot  billings   of freenode  centos fame  shared his method with me   diff -Naur dir1  dir2   Including the final directory forward slash doesn t matter    Also  it appears the -u option is not available on some older server versions of diff   The difference in diffs     diff -Nar  tmp dir1  tmp dir2  diff -Nar  tmp dir1 file  tmp dir2 file 28a29  gt  TEST    diff -qr  tmp dir1   tmp dir2  Files  tmp dir1 file and  tmp dir2 file differ

User · Answer

You can also use Rsync and find  For find   find  FOLDER -type f   cut -d  -f2-   sort  gt   tmp file list  FOLDER   But files with the same names and in the same subfolders  but with different content  will not be shown in the lists   If you are a fan of GUI  you may check Meld that  Alexander mentioned  It works fine in both windows and linux

User · Answer

To report differences between dirA and dirB  while also updating syncing   rsync -auv  lt dirA gt   lt dirB gt

User · Answer

To find diff use this command  diff -qr dir1  dir2   -r will diff all subdirectories too  -q tells diff to report only when files differ  diff  --brief dir1  dir2   --brief will show the files that dosent exist in directory  Or else we can use Meld which will show in graphical window its easy to find the difference  meld  dir1  dir2

User · Answer

Diffoscope is a great command line based directory diff tool   I especially like about it that it can diff into files      It will recursively unpack archives of many kinds and transform various binary formats into more human readable form to compare them  It can compare two tarballs  ISO images  or PDF just as easily    It will not only tell you which files differ  but also how they differ

User · Answer

I like to use git diff --no-index dir1  dir2   because it can show the differences in color  if you have that option set in your git config  and because it shows all of the differences in a long paged output using  less

User · Answer

Meld is also a great tool for comparing two directories   meld dir1  dir2   Meld has many options for comparing files or directories  If two files differ  it s easy to enter file comparison mode and see the exact differences

User · Answer

The command I use is   diff -qr dir1  dir2    It is exactly the same as Mark s    But his answer bothered me as it uses different types of flags  and it made me look twice  Using Mark s more verbose flags it would be   diff  --brief --recursive dir1  dir2    I apologise for posting when the other answer is perfectly acceptable  Could not stop myself    working on being less pedantic

[linux] Given two directory trees, how can I find out which files differ by content?

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