DIFFPP(1)

💖 DIFFPP 💖

ok bestie, welcome to diffpp(1) — the little cutie that makes your diff outputs actually pretty when you print them. it's giving glow-up for your terminal output, no cap ✨

🌸 NAME 🌸

diffpp — pretty-print diff outputs with GNU enscript 🎀

🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

diffpp currentfile < diff-file

that's it. that's the whole vibe. currentfile is the file you're diffing against, and the diff itself comes in on stdin. slay 💅

✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

okay so here's the tea ☕ — diffpp takes the output files from the diff(1) program and converts them into a format that's suitable to be printed with GNU enscript(1). literally the matchmaker between your diffs and your printer, fr fr.

the way it works is iconic: the program annotates the changes with enscript's special escapes, so enscript knows how to highlight the modified portions of the file. chef's kiss 👑

and what does the highlighting look like? here's the rundown:

• all changed and added lines get printed with a gray-background 🩶 — so they pop off the page
• deleted lines are marked with minus (-) characters
• and diffpp prints one minus character for each deleted line — one - per deleted line, that's the rule, periodt 💯

🌈 EXAMPLES 🌈

the easiest way to use diffpp is to use it as an input filter for enscript. lowkey the bestie move. here's why it's so clean: if an input filter is specified for enscript, it gets used to pre-process the incoming data-stream. and filtering does not alter any header strings or file-timestamps which might be printed on enscript headers — only the incoming data is modified. so your headers stay pristine, your data gets the makeover ✨

• enscript -G2re --filter='rcsdiff %s | diffpp %s' *.c *.h print the changes between current source files and their latest RCS-versions. main character energy, honestly 💅
• enscript -G2re --filter='diff %s~ %s | diffpp %s' *.c *.h print changes between source files and the corresponding backup-files. obsessed with this one 🫶

👀 SEE ALSO 👀

• diff(1)
• enscript(1)

go read those too, iykyk 📚

🎀 AUTHOR 🎀

Markku Rossi <mtr@iki.fi> <http://www.iki.fi/~mtr/>

absolute legend, we stan 💜

ok that's the whole page bestie!! this was the DIFFPP manual, dated Jan 29, 1997 — yeah she's vintage, and she ate regardless 💅✨ no cap, go print something pretty 🦋🌸