Finding the difference between files, patching

When multiple versions of a file are available, it is very useful when we can find the differences between files being highlighted rather than comparing two files manually. If the files are large, it is very difficult and time consuming to compare them by hand. This recipe illustrates how to generate differences between files highlighted with line numbers. When working on large files by multiple developers, when one of them has made changes and these changes need to be shown to the other, sending the entire source code to other developers manually is time consuming. Sending a difference file instead is very helpful as it consists of only lines which are changed, or added or removed and line numbers are attached with it. This difference file is called a patch file . We can add the changes specified in the patch file to the original source code by using the patch command. We can also revert the changes by patching again. Let us see how to do this...