From Bugzilla Helper: User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7.10) Gecko/20050716 Firefox/1.0.6 Description of problem: Consider: $ cat -A testa broken$ $ $ cat -A testb $ broken$ $ $ diff -b testa testb 1c1,2 < broken --- > > broken $ diff -B testa testb 1c1,2 < broken --- > > broken Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): diffutils-2.8.1-15 How reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1.diff -bB testa testb 2. 3. Actual Results: The files are shown to differ with respect to white space. Expected Results: man diff ... -b Ignore changes in amount of white space. -B Ignore changes that just insert or delete blank lines. Additional info:
Hmm. Responding to my own bug report, I suppose I want "-w Ignore white space when comparing lines.", which I think means that the man page needs some changes to the description of "-b". Also, "-B" seems to work in combination with "-w", but not by itself, yes?
The description of "-b" is correct as-is. To clarify, where there is white space, changed in the amount of it there is get ignored. Compare this with -w, where even the presence or not of white space is ignored for comparison. The "-B" option works correctly and distinctly from "-w".