NBDIFF(1)

💖 NBDIFF ✨

okay bestie, so nbdiff is a User Commands girlie and she lives in section 1 of the manual, and she is literally here to compute the difference between two Jupyter notebooks. no cap. 🎀

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🌸 NAME 🌸

nbdiff — compute the difference between two Jupyter notebooks 🦋

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✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

here's the vibe, the whole usage line, copied exactly so you can screenshot it and send it to the group chat:

usage: nbdiff [-h] [--version] [--config]
       [--log-level {DEBUG,INFO,WARN,ERROR,CRITICAL}] [-s] [-o] [-a]
       [-m] [-i] [-d] [--color-words] [--no-color] [--no-git]
       [--no-use-diff] [--out OUT] [base] [remote] [paths ...]

and what does she do? compute the difference between two Jupyter notebooks. that's it. that's the whole job. iconic behavior honestly. 👑

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🌈 positional arguments 🌈

• base — the base notebook filename OR base git-revision. yes she accepts both, she's flexible like that 💅
• remote — the remote modified notebook filename OR remote gitrevision. (the original literally writes it as "gitrevision", no hyphen, and I'm not about to fix what isn't mine to fix 🫶)
• paths — filter diffs for git-revisions based on path 🔍

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🎀 options 🎀

• -h, --help — show this help message and exit. the classic. the moment you forget a flag, she's there. 🫶
• --version — show program's version number and exit. one number, then she dips. ⭐
• --config — list the valid config keys and their current effective values. perfect for when you're like "wait what is she even set to rn" 🙈
• --log-level {DEBUG,INFO,WARN,ERROR,CRITICAL} — set the log level by name. those are the exact five names, no improvising: DEBUG, INFO, WARN, ERROR, CRITICAL 💀
• --color-words — whether to pass the --color-words flag to any internal calls to git diff 🌈
• --no-color — prevent use of ANSI color code escapes for text output. for when your terminal is doing too much 💅
• --no-git — prevent use of git for formatting diff/merge text output 🧚
• --no-use-diff — prevent use of diff/diff3 for formatting diff/merge text output 🦋
• --out OUT — if supplied, the diff is written to this file. Otherwise it is printed to the terminal. so like, file if you want it, terminal if you don't. your call bestie 💖

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🔥 ignorables 🔥

set which parts of the notebook (not) to process. this is the choose your own adventure section — every one of these comes as a little matched pair, one to process it and one to ignore it, capital letter included. 👑

• -s, --sources, -S, --ignore-sources — process/ignore sources.
• -o, --outputs, -O, --ignore-outputs — process/ignore outputs.
• -a, --attachments, -A, --ignore-attachments — process/ignore attachments.
• -m, --metadata, -M, --ignore-metadata — process/ignore metadata.
• -i, --id, -I, --ignore-id — process/ignore identifiers.
• -d, --details, -D, --ignore-details — process/ignore details not covered by other options. the catch-all girlie, the "everything else" of the notebook 🍓

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⚠️ real talk bestie: notice the flags are case-sensitive. lowercase -s means process sources, capital -S means ignore sources. same pattern for -o/-O, -a/-A, -m/-M, -i/-I, -d/-D. don't mix them up or you'll be sitting there like "why is my diff empty" 😭

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and that's the whole page, fr fr. this little manual moment is from nbdiff 4.0.4, dated February 2026 — shoutout to the User Commands section for hosting her. go diff some notebooks, you're gonna slay 💖✨🎀🦋🌸