Diff and patch

Basic Usage
Create a directory patch: cp -r dir dir-modified diff -ru dir dir-modified > dir.patch Then you can apply the patch: cp -r dir dir-patched cd dir-patched patch -p1 <../dir.patch
 * 1) apply changes to dir-modified

Example
First, we'll create some test output: $ zcat /usr/man/man5/passwd.5.gz | groff -a | fmt -w30 | tail -n30 >original.txt

Then, we'll make a version with a few changes: $ sed -e "s/ a / pjat /g" changed.txt

Let's take a look at the changes: $ diff -y --width=70 original.txt changed.txt |        |_ displays a fancy side-by-side format

Now let's make a file containing the changes: $ diff original.txt changed.txt >pjat.patch

Make a copy of the orignal and patch it: $ cp original.txt patched.txt $ patch patched.txt pjat.patch

And check that it is patched correctly: $ diff -s patched.txt changed.txt Files patched.txt and changed.txt are identical