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From: jrv@grad1.cis.upenn.edu (JR VanMechelen)
Newsgroups: comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d
Subject: Problem with GNU DIFF; need new diff?
Message-ID: <28855@netnews.upenn.edu>
Date: 27 Aug 90 14:46:07 GMT
Sender: news@netnews.upenn.edu
Reply-To: jrv@grad1.cis.upenn.edu (JR VanMechelen)
Organization: University of Pennsylvania
Lines: 36

I recently downloaded the DOS RCS, and when I discovered that it
needed diff, I also got gnudiff from wuarchive.wustl.edu.  gnudiff
seems to have a bug in it, however.  Whenever RCS calls it, as in:

     diff -a -n c:\tmp\t1010101 .\test.c

diff goes off.  It once reported that it was out of virtual memory,
a ^C will sometimes bring it back, and frequently I have to reboot.

As best I can figure it, diff is trying to construct a diff between
test.c and all of memory, a challenging task.  That, at least, is my
hypothesis.

The problem seems to have something to do with the '-n' flag and the
fact that the files are not in the current directory, for I can do:

     diff c:\tmp\t1010101 .\test.c

and

     diff -n t1010101 test.c

without any problems.

I am running DOS 4.0, if that matters to anyone.


So, I have three questions: first, is there someplace I can get a diff
that will work with RCS (all the diff's on simtel20 seem to use
different meanings for the switches)?  Second, where can I get the
source to the PC version of gnudiff?  Third, is there someone I can
notify so that gnudiff, which seems to run just fine otherwise, can be
tweaked to perfection?

JR VanMechelen
jrv@grad1.cis.upenn.edu