Ignore .svn when doing `diff -r`

Question

diff has an option --recursive (-r) to do a comparison between two directories (the files inside them). Is there a way to make diff ignore certain sub-directories (eg: .svn)?

$ diff -r src1/ src2/

score 142 · Accepted Answer · answered Apr 13 '10 at 00:04

142

Add --exclude=".svn" as an option like so:

$ diff -r --exclude=".svn" src1/ src2/

answered Apr 13 '10 at 00:04

Sebastian Paaske Tørholm

4,871

7

If you want to exclude multiple items just add another --exclude parameter. – JonMR Jul 12 '11 at 16:02
20

If you don't want to type --exclude every time use -x ".svn" – acorello Aug 14 '12 at 09:03
1

--exclude option is also not working on mac os. -x ".svn" works well. – alpert Mar 29 '16 at 11:13
--exclude works well on macOS 10.15.2, /usr/bin/diff 2.8.1 – Pavel Vlasov Mar 09 '21 at 13:00

score 16 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 13 '10 at 00:00

16

  diff --exclude=.svn ...

answered Apr 13 '10 at 00:00

Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams

112,653

Ignore .svn when doing `diff -r`

2 Answers2