My win32 system does not have diff as a built in command. My guess is that you downloaded it. It would be difficult to help you without knowing what program you are using.

From memory and experience often 'diff' type programs return 'succesful' when the compared files are identical and return '!successful' when the files differ. The typical thought is that it is more useful to use the exit code to indicate file difference (or lack thereof) in addition to if the command ran without error.

Typically the exit code will be one value (say 1) if the files differ, another value (say 0) if they are the same, and a third value (say 2) if there was an error.

Hope this helps.

Update: typo found and fixed.

---

---

Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!

Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.

Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.

Please read these before you post! —

• How do I compose an effective node title?
• How do I post a question effectively?
• Markup in the Monastery

Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:

a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr

You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)

	For:		Use:
	&		&
	<		&lt;
	>		&gt;
	[		&#91;
	]		&#93;

Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?

See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.