Re: patch to diff manpage - clarify "-x"

[Paul Eggert]

> Date: Thu, 24 Oct 2002 15:26:25 +0200 (CEST)
> From: Tomas Pospisek <address@hidden>
> 
> But wheter you will or not shorten diff --help, the man page should
> contain a description of all the options.

No, because we don't have time to maintain man pages in addition to
the regular documentation.  The man pages are generated automatically
from the --help output.  The man pages are not intended to be
complete, and we don't want to spend time worrying about them.

> +/* We're excluding things using -x or -X */
> +static bool excluding = 0;

That patch doesn't look right to me.  Among other things, there are
other options than -x or -X that make sense only when comparing
subdirectories.  If we change diff to exit when any of those options
used unless directory comparison is also used, I'm worried that we
might break something else.

> The confusion came from the fact that I wanted to test my pattern before
> letting it rattle through my entire filesystem. So I started off with:
> 
> $ diff -s bla bla.txt bla.tx
> 
> which didn't work,

I assume you mean "-x 'bla*'" here instead of "-s bla".