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I'm using diff to compare two huge volumes, and it is actually comparing many symlinked files over and over.

Is there some way to stop this? I want it to just compare the link itself; not follow it.

Or is there an alternate app that has this option?

Dan
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1 Answers1

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There is an argument --no-dereference which is not mentioned in the man page but listed by diff --help.

diff -r --no-dereference  dir1 dir2
homac
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  • Dammit! `man` pages are the most accessible doc, but over some ideological persnicketing, users have to scrape through `info` pages as well, or look at 3 different sources for help... Just to say this option is mentionned in the `info diff` as well. – PlasmaBinturong Dec 16 '20 at 17:29