Equivalent to dxdiff on HP-UX?

[Paul Maglinger]

Migrating from Tru64 to HP-UX. One of the developers uses Tru64 dxdiff quite a bit and likes it. Is there a comparable program on HP-UX or available from HP that we can use?

[Patrick Wallek]

Have a look here:
http://books.google.com/books?id=h-16rYWBfwMC&pg=PA185&lpg=PA185&dq=VMS+dxdiff&source=bl&ots=aHnKsZuSQy&sig=T-cTL6JfkPEtvZcd335Ba16HtH0

From what I can tell of DXDIFF, you should look at cmp and diff on HP-UX.

[Paul Maglinger]

I believe the feature they are looking for is the graphical result you get from dxdiff when in a X windows session.

[Court Campbell]

dxdiff just seems to be graphical. So you could just use diff. But I much prefer the gnu version:

http://hpux.connect.org.uk/hppd/hpux/Gnu/diffutils-2.8.7/

[Patrick Wallek]

No GUI versions of diff in HP-UX that I know of.

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi Paul:

A useful way to find utilities, libraries, etc. is to do a keyword search in the manpages. For instance:

# man -k difference
fdim( )(3M) - positive difference function
sdiff(1) - side-by-side difference program

...which since you are looking for a commandline tool points to section-1 and 'sdiff' which a further examination of this leads to 'diff(1)' among other possibilites.

# man -k diff

...would yield a longer list of candidates.

For this to work, you must have a '/usr/share/lib/whatis whatis' database of the manual pages. To read more, do:

# man man

Regards!

...JRF...

[PeterWolfe · Accepted solution]

There is no GUI diff tool in the base system but they
are plentiful. Popular alternatives:

- emacs - ediff mode in emacs is excellent
Not that dxdiff is view only. With most other
diff tools you can easily do merges (move the deltas
in either direction).
- vim - vim offers a similarly excellent color coded diff.
- tkdiff - tclTk based diff tool.
- xdiff
- mgdiff

Google for graphical diff tools and you'll find many more.