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

[Tomas Pospisek]

On Thu, 24 Oct 2002, Paul Eggert wrote:

> > 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.

OK.

> > +/* 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.

OK. Would a warning be OK though ( fprintf(STDERR,"-x bla bla...") )?
But the patch still wont work correctly when doing:

        diff -x bla dir1/ dir2/

when either of them is link.

> > 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".

Yes, that's what I tried next.
*t

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     Tomas Pospisek
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