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Status Not under consideration
Workspace AIX
Created by Guest
Created on Apr 19, 2017

Make 'diff' command POSIX compliant with binary files

The 'diff' command is not POSIX compliant when it comes to binary files. The standard says:

Diff Binary Output Format
In the POSIX locale, if one or both of the files being compared are not text files, an unspecified format shall be used that contains the pathnames of two files being compared and the string "differ".

Instead of giving the equivalent of a summary output stating the files are different, AIX's diff dumps out pages and pages of meaningless differences.

Idea priority High
  • Guest
    Reply
    |
    May 5, 2022
    IBM has evaluated the priority of this enhancement proposal relative to other future product content and determined that this RFE will not be pursued for a future product release
  • Guest
    Reply
    |
    Jul 27, 2018

    AIX 'diff' is indeed a posix-compliant.

    Following is the snippet from the POSIX standard:
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Diff Binary Output Format
    In the POSIX locale, if one or both of the files being compared are not text files, it is implementation-defined whether diff uses the binary file output format or the other formats as specified below. The binary file output format shall contain the pathnames of two files being compared and the string "differ".

    If both files being compared are text files, depending on the options specified, one of the following formats shall be used to write the differences.

    ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    It clearly mentions that, it is implementation defined and can use binary file output format as one of the output formats.

    http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/diff.html