Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!uunet!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!toad.com!gnu
From: gnu@toad.com
Newsgroups: gnu.utils.bug
Subject: diff of file and directory should only use last component of path
Message-ID: <8810102236.AA02495@hop.toad.com>
Date: 10 Oct 88 22:35:58 GMT
Sender: daemon@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu
Distribution: gnu
Organization: GNUs Not Usenet
Lines: 14

Unix diff can do things like:

	diff file dir
or
	diff dir file

and it will diff "file" against "dir/file".  GNU diff does this too,
but it takes the "dir/file" literally.  Unix diff actually just uses
the last component of the filename, e.g.

	diff /usr/include/stdio.h .

will diff "/usr/include/stdio.h" against "./stdio.h".  GNU diff compares
"/usr/include/stdio.h" against ".//usr/include/stdio.h".