please do your diffs right

Larry Wall lwall at sdcrdcf.UUCP
Fri Nov 30 08:24:40 AEST 1984


In article <529 at godot.UUCP> bruce at godot.UUCP (Bruce Nemnich) writes:
>Some people post diffs of fixes and enhancements with the file order
>backwards; they tell one how to get the original file from the modified
>version.  
>
>Such diffs are not only confusing to humans, they are useless for
>automatic updating with the recently posted patch utility.
>
>Please do the diffs in the correct order, e.g., 'diff -c old new'.
>-- 
>--Bruce Nemnich, Thinking Machines Corporation, Cambridge, MA
>  ihnp4!godot!bruce, bjn at mit-mc.arpa ... soon to be bruce at godot.arpa

This was true when it was written, but isn't true now.  I also believe in
"Thinking Machines".  The latest revision of patch, just posted, will detect
reversed diffs and apply them correctly.

(In fact, it was in response to the above note that I put the feature in.
Thank you, Bruce, for the idea.)

The new version (1.2) is in net.sources.  Known bugs have also been fixed.

Larry Wall
{allegra,burdvax,cbosgd,hplabs,ihnp4,sdcsvax}!sdcrdcf!lwall



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