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compares lines sequentially, showing the actual differences and trying to re-synchronise (if the differing sections have different lengths). Powershell has some nice features, but there are some things it should just not try to do for me.įc.exe is better for text comparing since it designed to work like *nix diff, i.e. Mainly because Powershell doesn't understand arguments which are run together and typing, for example "rm -Force -Recurse" is a lot more effort than "rm -rf". If anyone is interested, having GnuWin32 installed, I also include the following in my powershell profile: remove-item alias:rm The -force argument is required because Powershell is quite precious about this particular inbuilt alias.
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The solution for anyone looking for a sane output is
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For another, the difference indicator is on the right, far from the content - it's a readability nightmare. For one thing, you have to hold it's hand in actually reading files (with gc / get-content). As others have noted, if you were expecting a unix-y diff output, using the powershell diff alias would let you down hard.
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