Re: Patch for Diffutils 2.7

[Paul Eggert]

> From: Timothy Kilbourn <address@hidden>
> Date: Mon, 11 Feb 2002 09:52:22 -0500 (EST)
> 
> I wanted diff to ignore the files that weren't in both directories
> (*.o, *~, etc) without having to figure out and specify what those
> files were.

Hmm, can't you just filter the output of diff through "grep -v '^Only in '"?

> The following patch adds a command line option --ignore-new-file
> that will not emit any output for a file found in one directory but
> not the other.

Is that wise?  Wouldn't be better to have a command line option
--copied-file that causes absent files to be treated as copies of
the existing files?

> In addition, if this used in conjunction with the -N or -P options,
> diff will display an error message and then exit.

That sounds reasonable, since the options conflict.

But I'm still missing the motivation.  Can you provide some examples?
The comments in your code indicate a problem with "patch", but "patch"
ignores the "Only in" lines.