NAME
    diff3 - find differences between three files

SYNOPSIS
    diff3 [options] mine older yours

DESCRIPTION
    The diff3 command compares three files and outputs descriptions of
    their differences.

    The files to compare are mine, older, and yours.  At most one of  these
    three file names may be -, which tells diff3 to read the standard input
    for that file.

 Options
    Below is a summary of all of the options that GNU diff3 accepts.  Mul-
    tiple single letter options (unless they take an argument) can be com-
    bined into a single command line argument.

    -a   Treat all files as text and compare them line-by-line, even if
    they do not appear to be text.

    -A   Incorporate all changes from older to yours into mine, surround-
    ing all conflicts with bracket lines.

    -B   Old behavior of -A. Shows non-conflicts.

    -e   Generate an ed script that incorporates all the  changes from
    older to yours into mine.

    -E   Like -e,  except  bracket lines from overlapping changes' first
    and third files. With -e, an overlapping change looks like
    this:

    <<<<<<< mine
    lines from mine
    =======
    lines from yours
    >>>>>>> yours

    --ed  Generate an ed script that incorporates all the changes from
    older to yours into mine.

    --easy-only
    Like -e, except output only the nonoverlapping changes.

    -i   Generate w and q commands at the end of the ed script for System
    V  compatibility.  This option must be combined with one of the
    -AeExX3 options, and may not be combined with -m.

    --initial-tab
    Output a tab rather than two spaces before the text of a line in
    normal format. This causes the alignment of tabs in the line to
    look normal.

    -L label
    --label=label
    Use the label label for the brackets output by the -A, -E and -X
    options.  This option may be given up to three times, one for
    each input file. The default labels are the names of the  input
    files.  Thus diff3 -L X -L Y -L Z -m A B C acts like diff3 -m A
    B C , except that the output looks like it came from files named
    X, Y and Z rather than from files named A, B and C.

    -m
    --merge
    Apply the edit script to the first file and send the result to
    standard output. Unlike piping the output from diff3 to ed,
    this works even  for binary files and incomplete lines.  -A is
    assumed if no edit script option is specified.

    --overlap-only
    Like -e, except output only the overlapping changes.

    --show-all
    Incorporate all unmerged changes from older to yours into  mine,
    surrounding all overlapping changes with bracket lines.

    --show-overlap
    Like -e,  except  bracket lines from overlapping changes' first
    and third files.

    -T   Output a tab rather than two spaces before the text of a line in
    normal format. This causes the alignment of tabs in the line to
    look normal.

    --text Treat all files as text and compare them line-by-line, even if
    they do not appear to be text.

    -v
    --version
    Output the version number of diff3.

    -x   Like -e, except output only the overlapping changes.

    -X   Like -E,  except output only the overlapping changes. In other
    words, like -x, except bracket changes as in -E.

    -3   Like -e, except output only the nonoverlapping changes.

SEE ALSO
   cmp(1),comm(1),diff(1),ed(1),patch(1),sdiff(1).

DIAGNOSTICS
    An exit status of 0 means diff3 was successful, 1 means some conflicts
    were found, and 2 means trouble.