TRACEDIFF(1)

💖 tracediff(1) — find and print differences between two traces 💖

okay bestie, listen up — this is tracediff, a User Commands girlie who lives in section 1 of the manual and whose whole entire personality is comparing two trace files and telling you exactly what's different. no cap. ✨

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✨ NAME ✨

tracediff — find and print differences between two traces 🦋

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🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

tracediff [ -m maxdiff ] firsturi seconduri

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💅 DESCRIPTION 💅

so basically, tracediff takes two trace files and compares them, then prints out all the deets of the packets that differ straight to standard output. it's giving detective energy. 🔍

when is this useful, you ask? iconic question:

• finding packets that are in one trace but not in the other 👀
• finding conversion errors
• finding snapping errors

lowkey it's the vibe check your traces never asked for, and honestly? they needed it. 💖

• -m maxdiff — stop processing after displaying maxdiff differences. that's it, that's the flag. once it's shown you that many diffs, it's done, it's clocking out, main character has left the building. 🚪✨

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🎀 EXAMPLES 🎀

here's the moment you've been waiting for, fr fr:

tracediff -m 10 erf:/traces/orig.erf.gz pcapfile:/traces/convert.pcap.gz

ten differences max, two trace URIs, one slay. 🫶

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💀 BUGS 💀

okay so not exactly a bug, but bestie you need to know: the contents of the framing headers (i.e. the PCAP or ERF encapsulation) are not compared. so if the wrapper is different but the packets match... tracediff is not gonna clock it. 🙈

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🌈 LINKS 🌈

more details about tracediff (and libtrace) can be found at:

http://www.wand.net.nz/trac/libtrace/wiki/UserDocumentation

go read it, it's giving documentation realness 📚✨

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👑 SEE ALSO 👑

the whole friend group, assembled:

• libtrace(3)
• tracemerge(1)
• tracefilter(1)
• traceconvert(1)
• tracestats(1)
• tracesummary(1)
• tracertstats(1)
• tracesplit(1)
• tracesplit_dir(1)
• tracereport(1)
• tracepktdump(1)
• traceanon(1)
• tracereplay(1)
• traceends(1)
• tracetopends(1)

collect them all, they're literally the avengers of packet tooling. 🦋💜

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🫶 AUTHORS 🫶

Shane Alcock — <salcock@cs.waikato.ac.nz> 🌸

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and that's the whole page, bestie!! this lil masterpiece is from tracediff (libtrace), dated January 2010 — yes, it's vintage, and yes, it still ate. 💅✨ 🎀