Take diff of two vertical opened windows in Vim

Question

I've have two files opened. They are opened in vertical mode, next to next. Can I instantly diff these two files without leaving or closing Vim ?

Nefrubyr · Accepted Answer · 2017-10-17T09:24:43.177

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To begin diffing on all visible windows:

:windo diffthis

which executes :diffthis on each window.

To end diff mode:

:diffoff!

(The ! makes diffoff apply to all windows of the current tab - it'd be nice if diffthis had the same feature, but it doesn't.)

edited Oct 17 '17 at 09:24

answered Dec 08 '10 at 10:04

Nefrubyr

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The `:windo` command makes it even better. Thanks. I'll will map it to make it easier. – Fatih Arslan Dec 08 '10 at 10:21
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That's good answer, but note that minibufexplorer window should be closed before this operation, if opened. Otherwise diff shows incorrect results. – baldrs Jul 30 '14 at 13:28
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One can use an alias`:windo difft[this]`. Ref: `:help diff` – DmitrySandalov Apr 22 '15 at 18:04

Nathan Fellman · Answer 2 · 2014-07-31T05:27:18.983

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in each of the windows you want to diff type:

:diffthis

If you want to diff all of the open windows, you can do:

:windo diffthis

(windo will apply the command to all open windows)

edited Jul 31 '14 at 05:27

answered Dec 08 '10 at 08:40

Nathan Fellman

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score 10 · Answer 3 · answered Jun 29 '15 at 17:45

Following up on the earlier answers,

:windo difft (short for diffthis) will start diff mode in all the open windows.
:windo diffo (short for diffoff) will stop diff mode in all the open windows.

I have the following mappings in my vimrc to make it easier:

command! Difft windo diffthis
command! Diffo windo diffoff

score 6 · Answer 4 · edited Oct 06 '20 at 08:16

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Following on the earlier answers I adapted the mapping provided by @cxw. The following mapping automatically closes NERDTree and diffs the open windows. It does not matter if NERDTree is closed, it works the same way. I do this quite often so it saved me quite some time.

command! Difft NERDTreeClose | windo diffthis

edited Oct 06 '20 at 08:16

Wolfson

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answered Jun 06 '18 at 11:17

Jordi Freixa

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Take diff of two vertical opened windows in Vim

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