Comparing files with diffoscope
Spot the Difference
Diffoscope finds all the differences between files or folders, but at the price of verbosity. We show you how to focus diffoscope on what you want to know.
Diffoscope [1] is a Python 3 command-line tool that shows, with many more details than you might imagine, all the possible differences between two files, folders, or file archives in TAR, ISO, or other formats. In TAR, ISO, and the others, diffoscope can browse the full internal hierarchy of those containers to look at every file they contain.
The basic features and most common uses of diffoscope were previously explained by Bruce Byfield in Linux Magazine [2]. After a brief recap of those features, I will discuss what I consider a limitation of this tool for non-programmers and then illustrate a general method to overcome that limitation – allowing you to much more quickly exploit this great tool's potential.
Diffoscope's Main Features
The full diffoscope package can handle almost every file format in existence, if the right third-party tools are available in your system. A "minimal" version of the package is also available, and as far as I can tell should be more than adequate for the great majority of users. When browsing folders or archives, diffoscope compares files with the same or similar names in the same subfolder. If there is no other way to find differences between files and display them, it falls back on "hexdump comparison" (i.e., comparing the two files byte by byte and showing differences in byte values).
[...]
Buy this article as PDF
(incl. VAT)
Buy Linux Magazine
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.
News
-
Gnome 47.2 Now Available
Gnome 47.2 is now available for general use but don't expect much in the way of newness, as this is all about improvements and bug fixes.
-
Latest Cinnamon Desktop Releases with a Bold New Look
Just in time for the holidays, the developer of the Cinnamon desktop has shipped a new release to help spice up your eggnog with new features and a new look.
-
Armbian 24.11 Released with Expanded Hardware Support
If you've been waiting for Armbian to support OrangePi 5 Max and Radxa ROCK 5B+, the wait is over.
-
SUSE Renames Several Products for Better Name Recognition
SUSE has been a very powerful player in the European market, but it knows it must branch out to gain serious traction. Will a name change do the trick?
-
ESET Discovers New Linux Malware
WolfsBane is an all-in-one malware that has hit the Linux operating system and includes a dropper, a launcher, and a backdoor.
-
New Linux Kernel Patch Allows Forcing a CPU Mitigation
Even when CPU mitigations can consume precious CPU cycles, it might not be a bad idea to allow users to enable them, even if your machine isn't vulnerable.
-
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.5 Released
Notify your friends, loved ones, and colleagues that the latest version of RHEL is available with plenty of enhancements.
-
Linux Sees Massive Performance Increase from a Single Line of Code
With one line of code, Intel was able to increase the performance of the Linux kernel by 4,000 percent.
-
Fedora KDE Approved as an Official Spin
If you prefer the Plasma desktop environment and the Fedora distribution, you're in luck because there's now an official spin that is listed on the same level as the Fedora Workstation edition.
-
New Steam Client Ups the Ante for Linux
The latest release from Steam has some pretty cool tricks up its sleeve.