# App-ccdiff

A colored diff that also colors inside changed lines

# Synopsis
```
usage: ccdiff [options] file1 [file2]
        file1 or file2 can be - (but not both)
   -V    --version      Show version and exit
  Diff options:
   -U    --utf-8                 Input is in UTF-8
   -u[3] --unified=3             Show a unified diff
   -w    --ignore-all-space      Ignore all whitespace
   -b    --ignore-space-change   Ignore horizontal whitespace changes
   -Z    --ignore-trailing-space Ignore whitespace at line ending
   -B    --ignore-blank-lines    Ignore changes where lines are all blank
   -i    --ignore-case           Ignore case changes
  Color options:
         --no-color     Do not use colors
         --old=red      Color to indicate removed content
         --new=green    Color to indicate added   content
         --bg=white     Background color for colored indicators
   -p    --pink         Shortcut for --old=magenta
   -f    --fancy        Use Unicode indicators instead of ^
   -r    --reverse      Reverse the colors of the indicators
```
# Description

All command-line tools that show the difference between two files fall
short in showing minor changes visuably useful. This tool tries to give
the look and feel of `diff --color` or `colordiff`, but extending the
display of colored output from red for deleted lines and green for added
lines to red for deleted characters and green for added characters within
the changed lines.

The tool has options to choose your own favorite color combinations, as
long as they are supported by
[Term::ANSIColor](https://metacpan.org/pod/Term::ANSIColor).

If you want no colors but indicators below the removed/added characters
in the output, which is very useful if you want to email the output, the
option `--no-color` adds those indicators. With the `--fancy` option you
will get Unicode characters.

# Installation

Change the first line of `ccdiff` to start your favorite perl interpreter
and then move the file to a folder in your `$PATH`.

# Alternatives

## Command line / CLI

 * `diff`

 * `diff --color`

 * `colordiff`

 * `git`

   This however requires a long command:
```
$ git -c color.diff.new='bold reverse green' \
         -c color.diff.old='bold reverse red'   \
         diff --no-index -U0 --no-color \
              --word-diff=color --word-diff-regex=. \
             <file1> <file2>
```
## ASCII

 * `vimdiff`

## GUI

Please never use the `xdiff` command (if available at all), because it is
included in many distributions and/or packages and they all work different
or not at all. Some at not intended to be invoked from the command line.

The list is in increasing clarity of the tool being able to show *minor*
changes in lines visually outstanding:

 * `mgdiff` (C, X11)

 * `diffuse` (Python)

 * `bcompare` (C, X11, not freeware/opensource)

 * `kompare` (C, X11, KDE)

 * `xxdiff` (C, X11)

 * `meld` (Python)

 * `kdiff3` (C, X11, Qt)

 * `tkdiff` (Tcl/Tk)

# Dependencies

This tool will run on recent perl distributions that have
[Algorithm::Diff](https://metacpan.org/pod/Algorithm::Diff)
installed. The modules
[Term::ANSIColor](https://metacpan.org/pod/Term::ANSIColor)
and [Getopt::Long](https://metacpan.org/pod/Getopt::Long)
that are also used are part of the perl CORE distribution
since at least version 5.6.0.
```
 suse#   zypper in perl-Algorithm-Diff

 centos# yum install -y perl-Algorithm-Diff

 other#  cpan Algorithm::Diff
```
# Git integration

You can use ccdiff to show diffs in git. It may work like this:
```
$ git config --global diff.tool ccdiff
$ git config --global difftool.prompt false
$ git config --global difftool.ccdiff.cmd 'ccdiff --utf-8 -u -r $LOCAL $REMOTE'
$ git difftool SHA~..SHA
$ cat >~/bin/git-ccdiff <<EOF
#!/bin/sh

commit=$1
shift
git difftool $commit~1..$commit $@
EOF
$ chmod 755 ~/bin/git-ccdiff
$ git ccdiff SHA
```

## LIMITATIONS

There is no provision yet for showing zero-width unicode "characters", like
U+200b (ZERO WIDTH SPACE), U+200c (ZERO WITDH NON_JOINER), U+200D (ZERO WIDTH
JOINER), and U+feff (ZERO WIDTH NO-BREAK SPACE) will not show (yet) in normal
output and might cause displacement of other indicators.

There is no provision (yet) for coping with double-width characters.

## LICENSE

The Artistic License 2.0

Copyright (c) 2018-2018 H.Merijn Brand