diff command's -b option fails in certain cases

[Mahendra Ladhe]

Hi,

  the diff version I'm using is

diff (GNU diffutils) 2.8.1

Copyright (C) 2002 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

 

The bug I found with 'diff' is with the -b option(Ignore changes in the
amount of white space)

The procedure to reproduce the defect is as follows.

 

1.      Create two text files f1 anfd f2
2.      Type abcd in file f1, there should not be any leading space
characters.
3.      Type some space characters and then abcd in file f2.
4.      Compare 2 files using the command 'diff -b f1 f2'
5.      You will the following output.

1c1

< abcd

---

>   abcd

 

As seen above, even though the 2 files differ only in whitespace, the
whitespace is not ignored even with the -b option.

 

 

Thanks,

Mahendra Ladhe