English
diff
Pronunciation Noun

diff (plural diffs)

  1. (slang) Abbreviation of difference#English|difference.
    A peach and an apricot? What's the diff?
  2. (computing) Any program which compares two files or sets of files and outputs a description of the differences between them.
  3. (computing) The output of a diff program. A diff file.
    • 2004, Paul Graham, Great Hackers, Essay ↗:
      I didn't want to waste people's time telling them things they already knew. It's more efficient just to give them the diffs.
  4. (medicine) Abbreviation of differential#English|differential: differential of types of white blood cell in a complete blood count.
  5. (rock climbing) A difficult route.
Verb

diff (diffs, present participle diffing; past and past participle diffed)

  1. (transitive, computing) To run a diff program on (files or items) so as to produce a description of the differences between them, as for a patch file.
  2. (transitive, computing) To compare two files or other objects, manually or otherwise.
Proper noun
  1. (computing) A program, historically part of the Unix operating system, which compares two files or sets of files and outputs a description of the differences between them.
Related terms

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