diffutils: Incomplete Lines
3 Incomplete Lines
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When an input file ends in a non-newline character, its last line is
called an "incomplete line" because its last character is not a newline.
All other lines are called "full lines" and end in a newline character.
Incomplete lines do not match full lines unless differences in white
space are ignored (⇒White Space).
An incomplete line is normally distinguished on output from a full
line by a following line that starts with '\'. However, the RCS format
(⇒RCS) outputs the incomplete line as-is, without any trailing
newline or following line. The side by side format normally represents
incomplete lines as-is, but in some cases uses a '\' or '/' gutter
marker. ⇒Side by Side. The if-then-else line format preserves a
line's incompleteness with '%L', and discards the newline with '%l'.
⇒Line Formats. Finally, with the 'ed' and forward 'ed' output
formats (⇒Output Formats) 'diff' cannot represent an incomplete
line, so it pretends there was a newline and reports an error.
For example, suppose 'F' and 'G' are one-byte files that contain just
'f' and 'g', respectively. Then 'diff F G' outputs
1c1
< f
\ No newline at end of file
---
> g
\ No newline at end of file
(The exact message may differ in non-English locales.) 'diff -n F G'
outputs the following without a trailing newline:
d1 1
a1 1
g
'diff -e F G' reports two errors and outputs the following:
1c
g
.
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