Any way to change the tab size of the diff command's output?
Clash Royale CLAN TAG#URR8PPP
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I'm on OSX and running a diff command like this, to create side-by-side output:
$] diff -Bbwy --width=200 --suppress-common-lines file1.txt file2.txt > diff-output.txt
It outputs my diffs just fine, but it uses tabs for indentation of the output (alignment of the side-by-side middle line, etc). Additionally, the files in question also use tabs for indentation inside them, so the diff output has all these tab characters in them.
I want the output of diff to have spaces, specifically 4-space's instead of tabs.
I know diff supports the -t option to do just that, but the problem is it uses a fixed size of 8-spaces for all tabs (not only the leading line indentation tabs from the original files, but also its alignment tabs to keep the middle line aligned, etc).
I've tried a variety of post-processing approaches to take the tabs (or spaces) from diff output and shrink them to the desired size of 4-spaces, but that always just causes mis-alignments of the diff side-by-side output.
Then I thought maybe I could pre-process the two files being diffed, using tab2space or something like that, to get each file's line indentations from tabs to 4-spaces before diffing. But I can't work out how, without temporary files, to then get both of those pre-processed inputs piped into diff.
Can that be done?
Or is there any other approach I've not tried? Any secret way to config/force diff -t to just use 4-space tabs instead of 8?
osx diff whitespace
asked Nov 5 '17 at 18:05
Kyle Simpson
1033
add a comment |Â
up vote
0
down vote
favorite
I'm on OSX and running a diff command like this, to create side-by-side output:
$] diff -Bbwy --width=200 --suppress-common-lines file1.txt file2.txt > diff-output.txt
It outputs my diffs just fine, but it uses tabs for indentation of the output (alignment of the side-by-side middle line, etc). Additionally, the files in question also use tabs for indentation inside them, so the diff output has all these tab characters in them.
I want the output of diff to have spaces, specifically 4-space's instead of tabs.
I know diff supports the -t option to do just that, but the problem is it uses a fixed size of 8-spaces for all tabs (not only the leading line indentation tabs from the original files, but also its alignment tabs to keep the middle line aligned, etc).
I've tried a variety of post-processing approaches to take the tabs (or spaces) from diff output and shrink them to the desired size of 4-spaces, but that always just causes mis-alignments of the diff side-by-side output.
Then I thought maybe I could pre-process the two files being diffed, using tab2space or something like that, to get each file's line indentations from tabs to 4-spaces before diffing. But I can't work out how, without temporary files, to then get both of those pre-processed inputs piped into diff.
Can that be done?
Or is there any other approach I've not tried? Any secret way to config/force diff -t to just use 4-space tabs instead of 8?
osx diff whitespace
asked Nov 5 '17 at 18:05
Kyle Simpson
1033
BTW, I believe that-bwis redundant. Do you find that it behaves differently from-b?
– G-Man
Nov 5 '17 at 19:51
I don't know that I'm seeing any difference between-b,-w, and-bw, but they seemed like they could be different as they're listed separately. Shrugs.
– Kyle Simpson
Nov 6 '17 at 20:45
add a comment |Â
up vote
0
down vote
favorite
up vote
0
down vote
favorite
I'm on OSX and running a diff command like this, to create side-by-side output:
$] diff -Bbwy --width=200 --suppress-common-lines file1.txt file2.txt > diff-output.txt
It outputs my diffs just fine, but it uses tabs for indentation of the output (alignment of the side-by-side middle line, etc). Additionally, the files in question also use tabs for indentation inside them, so the diff output has all these tab characters in them.
I want the output of diff to have spaces, specifically 4-space's instead of tabs.
I know diff supports the -t option to do just that, but the problem is it uses a fixed size of 8-spaces for all tabs (not only the leading line indentation tabs from the original files, but also its alignment tabs to keep the middle line aligned, etc).
I've tried a variety of post-processing approaches to take the tabs (or spaces) from diff output and shrink them to the desired size of 4-spaces, but that always just causes mis-alignments of the diff side-by-side output.
Then I thought maybe I could pre-process the two files being diffed, using tab2space or something like that, to get each file's line indentations from tabs to 4-spaces before diffing. But I can't work out how, without temporary files, to then get both of those pre-processed inputs piped into diff.
Can that be done?
Or is there any other approach I've not tried? Any secret way to config/force diff -t to just use 4-space tabs instead of 8?
osx diff whitespace
asked Nov 5 '17 at 18:05
Kyle Simpson
1033
I'm on OSX and running a diff command like this, to create side-by-side output:
$] diff -Bbwy --width=200 --suppress-common-lines file1.txt file2.txt > diff-output.txt
It outputs my diffs just fine, but it uses tabs for indentation of the output (alignment of the side-by-side middle line, etc). Additionally, the files in question also use tabs for indentation inside them, so the diff output has all these tab characters in them.
I want the output of diff to have spaces, specifically 4-space's instead of tabs.
I know diff supports the -t option to do just that, but the problem is it uses a fixed size of 8-spaces for all tabs (not only the leading line indentation tabs from the original files, but also its alignment tabs to keep the middle line aligned, etc).
I've tried a variety of post-processing approaches to take the tabs (or spaces) from diff output and shrink them to the desired size of 4-spaces, but that always just causes mis-alignments of the diff side-by-side output.
Then I thought maybe I could pre-process the two files being diffed, using tab2space or something like that, to get each file's line indentations from tabs to 4-spaces before diffing. But I can't work out how, without temporary files, to then get both of those pre-processed inputs piped into diff.
Can that be done?
Or is there any other approach I've not tried? Any secret way to config/force diff -t to just use 4-space tabs instead of 8?
osx diff whitespace
asked Nov 5 '17 at 18:05
Kyle Simpson
1033
asked Nov 5 '17 at 18:05
Kyle Simpson
1033
asked Nov 5 '17 at 18:05
Kyle Simpson
1033
asked Nov 5 '17 at 18:05
Kyle Simpson
1033
1033
BTW, I believe that-bwis redundant. Do you find that it behaves differently from-b?
– G-Man
Nov 5 '17 at 19:51
I don't know that I'm seeing any difference between-b,-w, and-bw, but they seemed like they could be different as they're listed separately. Shrugs.
– Kyle Simpson
Nov 6 '17 at 20:45
add a comment |Â
BTW, I believe that-bwis redundant. Do you find that it behaves differently from-b?
– G-Man
Nov 5 '17 at 19:51
I don't know that I'm seeing any difference between-b,-w, and-bw, but they seemed like they could be different as they're listed separately. Shrugs.
– Kyle Simpson
Nov 6 '17 at 20:45
BTW, I believe that
-bw is redundant. Do you find that it behaves differently from -b?– G-Man
Nov 5 '17 at 19:51
BTW, I believe that
-bw is redundant. Do you find that it behaves differently from -b?– G-Man
Nov 5 '17 at 19:51
I don't know that I'm seeing any difference between
-b, -w, and -bw, but they seemed like they could be different as they're listed separately. Shrugs.– Kyle Simpson
Nov 6 '17 at 20:45
I don't know that I'm seeing any difference between
-b, -w, and -bw, but they seemed like they could be different as they're listed separately. Shrugs.– Kyle Simpson
Nov 6 '17 at 20:45
add a comment |Â
1 Answer
1
active
oldest
votes
up vote
1
down vote
accepted
diff (options) <(expand -t4 file1.txt) <(expand -t4 file2.txt)will expand tabs in the input file to spaces,
assuming tab stops set every four columns.ÂÂ
Combining this with
diff’s -t option should get you what you want.answered Nov 5 '17 at 19:51
G-Man
11.6k82657
Awesome, that worked perfectly. I was trying|and had completely forgotten about<. :)
– Kyle Simpson
Nov 6 '17 at 20:35
add a comment |Â
1 Answer
1
active
oldest
votes
1 Answer
1
active
oldest
votes
active
oldest
votes
active
oldest
votes
up vote
1
down vote
accepted
diff (options) <(expand -t4 file1.txt) <(expand -t4 file2.txt)will expand tabs in the input file to spaces,
assuming tab stops set every four columns.ÂÂ
Combining this with
diff’s -t option should get you what you want.answered Nov 5 '17 at 19:51
G-Man
11.6k82657
Awesome, that worked perfectly. I was trying|and had completely forgotten about<. :)
– Kyle Simpson
Nov 6 '17 at 20:35
add a comment |Â
up vote
1
down vote
accepted
diff (options) <(expand -t4 file1.txt) <(expand -t4 file2.txt)will expand tabs in the input file to spaces,
assuming tab stops set every four columns.ÂÂ
Combining this with
diff’s -t option should get you what you want.answered Nov 5 '17 at 19:51
G-Man
11.6k82657
Awesome, that worked perfectly. I was trying|and had completely forgotten about<. :)
– Kyle Simpson
Nov 6 '17 at 20:35
add a comment |Â
up vote
1
down vote
accepted
up vote
1
down vote
accepted
diff (options) <(expand -t4 file1.txt) <(expand -t4 file2.txt)will expand tabs in the input file to spaces,
assuming tab stops set every four columns.ÂÂ
Combining this with
diff’s -t option should get you what you want.answered Nov 5 '17 at 19:51
G-Man
11.6k82657
diff (options) <(expand -t4 file1.txt) <(expand -t4 file2.txt)will expand tabs in the input file to spaces,
assuming tab stops set every four columns.ÂÂ
Combining this with
diff’s -t option should get you what you want.answered Nov 5 '17 at 19:51
G-Man
11.6k82657
answered Nov 5 '17 at 19:51
G-Man
11.6k82657
answered Nov 5 '17 at 19:51
G-Man
11.6k82657
answered Nov 5 '17 at 19:51
G-Man
11.6k82657
11.6k82657
Awesome, that worked perfectly. I was trying|and had completely forgotten about<. :)
– Kyle Simpson
Nov 6 '17 at 20:35
add a comment |Â
Awesome, that worked perfectly. I was trying|and had completely forgotten about<. :)
– Kyle Simpson
Nov 6 '17 at 20:35
Awesome, that worked perfectly. I was trying
| and had completely forgotten about <. :)– Kyle Simpson
Nov 6 '17 at 20:35
Awesome, that worked perfectly. I was trying
| and had completely forgotten about <. :)– Kyle Simpson
Nov 6 '17 at 20:35
add a comment |Â
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BTW, I believe that
-bwis redundant. Do you find that it behaves differently from-b?– G-Man
Nov 5 '17 at 19:51
I don't know that I'm seeing any difference between
-b,-w, and-bw, but they seemed like they could be different as they're listed separately. Shrugs.– Kyle Simpson
Nov 6 '17 at 20:45