What does 1c1 in diff tool mean?

diff, linux

Solution

To answer the question you raised in the title: 1c1 indicates that line 1 in the first file was c hanged somehow to produce line 1 in the second file.

In practical terms: They probably differ in whitespace (perhaps trailing spaces, or Unix versus Windows line endings?).

Try `diff -w file1 file2`, which will ignore whitespace. Or `cmp file1 file2`, which will tell you how many bytes into the file the first difference occurs.

Problem

I ran diff with two files and got the following output: ``` 1c1 < dbacaad --- > dbacaad ``` What does this mean? My two files seem to be exactly the same. Thank you very much!

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