Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!cmcl2!brl-adm!brl-smoke!gwyn
From: gwyn@brl-smoke.ARPA (Doug Gwyn )
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: context diff and patch
Message-ID: <8122@brl-smoke.ARPA>
Date: 18 Jun 88 02:10:30 GMT
References: <954@fig.bbn.com>
Reply-To: gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB) <gwyn>)
Organization: Ballistic Research Lab (BRL), APG, MD.
Lines: 10

In article <954@fig.bbn.com> rsalz@bbn.com (Rich Salz) writes:
>Using diff -e and ed are fine, as long as you are able to (naively) assume
>that nobody will add or delete a line to what you put out.

What I said was:  In any context where I would trust "patch", I would also
trust "ed" using the output of "diff -e", which is generally much less output.

I would trust NEITHER "ed" nor "patch" when modifications have been made
to the original code.  "patch" may be somewhat more likely to succeed in
such a case, but it obviously cannot be guaranteed to work right.