PLAKAR-DIFF(1)

💅 PLAKAR-DIFF ✨

okay so bestie, welcome to plakar-diff, a.k.a. the General Commands Manual page that's gonna teach you how to spot the differences between files in your Plakar snapshots 🦋 this is lowkey one of the most satisfying commands in the whole toolkit, ngl — it's giving detective energy 🔍

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🌸 NAME 🌸

plakar-diff — show differences between files in a Plakar snapshots 💖

(yes, that's the real wording, and yes, "a Plakar snapshots" is how it's written in the original — we don't fix, we don't judge, we report 🫶)

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✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

plakar diff [-highlight] [-recursive] snapshotID1[:path1]
       snapshotID2[:path2]

that's it, that's the whole vibe. two snapshot IDs, optional paths, optional flags, maximum slay 🎀

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💅 DESCRIPTION 💅

so the plakar diff command compares two Plakar snapshots, and optionally you can restrict the comparison to specific files within them. iconic behavior, honestly.

• if you give it only snapshot IDs, it compares the root directories of each snapshot 📁
• if you give it file paths, the command compares the individual files themselves 🔥

the diff output comes out in unified diff format, and there's an option to highlight the differences if you want it to look extra pretty ✨

the options are as follows, bestie — there's literally two of them, we love a short list:

👑 OPTIONS 👑

• -highlight — applies syntax highlighting to the diff output so it's actually readable and not just a wall of text 😭 readability slay!
• -recursive — when you're comparing directories, this makes it recursively compare all the subdirectories too 🌀 no subdirectory left behind, periodt.

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🦋 EXIT STATUS 🦋

the plakar-diff utility exits 0 on success, and >0 if an error occurs 💀

so like — 0 means we ate and left no crumbs, and anything above 0 means something went sideways. simple as that 🍓

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🌈 EXAMPLES 🌈

compare root directories of two snapshots 🎀

$ plakar diff abc123 def456

compare across snapshots with highlighting: /etc/passwd ✨

$ plakar diff -highlight abc123:/etc/passwd def456:/etc/passwd

see how the :/etc/passwd rides along on each snapshot ID? that's the snapshotID:path thing in action, iykyk 💜

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🧚 SEE ALSO 🧚

• plakar(1)
• plakar-backup(1)

go read those next, bestie, they're the main character energy companions to this one 🌸

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real talk for a sec 🫶 — this whole page is from the Debian build, dated May 5, 2026, and it's the PLAKAR-DIFF(1) page. facts are facts, dates are dates, and we respect both 💖

okay bye, go diff something and slay 💅✨