Contents|Index|Previous|Next

Suppressing Differences in Blank Lines

The '-B' and '--ignore-blank-lines' options ignore insertions or deletions of blank lines. These options normally affect only lines that are completely empty; they do not affect lines that look empty but contain space or tab characters. With these options, for instance, consider a file containing only the following.

1. A point is that which has no part.
2. A line is breadthless length.
-- Euclid, The Elements, I

The last example is considered identical to another file containing only the following.

1. A point is that which has no part.
2. A line is breadthless length.
-- Euclid, The Elements, I

See the following documentation for related discussion.

- Hunks
- Suppressing Differences in Blank and Tab Spacing
- Suppressing Case Differences
- Suppressing Lines Matching a Regular Expression
- Summarizing Which Files Differ
- Binary Files and Forcing Text Comparisons
- diff Output Formats