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Digested diff3 docs:
There are two types of reported hunks by the merge feature:
`conflict': where only OLDER differs.
`overlaps': where all three files differ.
In all cases, where we don't select a change, we select MINE (SEL1).
diff3 options, those must be used along with the -m (--merge) option:
-e : `selects' conflicts and overlaps
-3 : `selects' conflicts only
-x : `selects' overlaps only
-A : `selects' conflict, overlaps and merged changes
-E and -X : versions of -e and -x that produce less output when not
using the -m option.
So our algorithm is simple, two choices:
1) first select SEL1 globally, then spawn diff3 -m, with the appropriate
option, find all the edits and unselect the reported edits. Upside: we don't
perform _any_ algorithmic work. Downside: we need to write a new parser because
the output of diff3 -m is an ed script.
2) do it by hand and work through all the lines, selecting lines as below:
AAA (SAME ) UNSELECTED
BAA (DIFF_1 ) SEL1
ABA (DIFF_2 ) SEL1 (3)
AAB (DIFF_3 ) conflict
-AA (DELETE_1 ) SEL1
A-A (DELETE_2 ) SEL1 (3)
AA- (DELETE_3 ) conflict
A-- (INSERT_1 ) SEL1
-A- (INSERT_2 ) SEL1 (3)
--A (INSERT_3 ) conflict
ABC (DIFF_ALL ) overlap
AB- (DIFFDEL_1 ) overlap
A-B (DIFFDEL_2 ) overlap
-AB (DIFFDEL_3 ) overlap
This is way simpler to implement and more efficient.
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From the docs:
When two people have made changes to copies of the same file,
`diff3' can produce a merged output that contains both sets of changes
together with warnings about conflicts.
One might imagine programs with names like `diff4' and `diff5' to
compare more than three files simultaneously, but in practice the need
rarely arises. You can use `diff3' to merge three or more sets of
changes to a file by merging two change sets at a time.
`diff3' can incorporate changes from two modified versions into a
common preceding version. This lets you merge the sets of changes
represented by the two newer files. Specify the common ancestor version
as the second argument and the two newer versions as the first and third
arguments, like this:
diff3 MINE OLDER YOURS
You can remember the order of the arguments by noting that they are in
alphabetical order.
You can think of this as subtracting OLDER from YOURS and adding the
result to MINE, or as merging into MINE the changes that would turn
OLDER into YOURS. This merging is well-defined as long as MINE and
OLDER match in the neighborhood of each such change. This fails to be
true when all three input files differ or when only OLDER differs; we
call this a "conflict". When all three input files differ, we call the
conflict an "overlap".
`diff3' gives you several ways to handle overlaps and conflicts.
You can omit overlaps or conflicts, or select only overlaps, or mark
conflicts with special `<<<<<<<' and `>>>>>>>' lines.
`diff3' can output the merge results as an `ed' script that that can
be applied to the first file to yield the merged output. However, it
is usually better to have `diff3' generate the merged output directly;
this bypasses some problems with `ed'.
You can select all unmerged changes from OLDER to YOURS for merging
into MINE with the `-e' or `--ed' option. You can select only the
nonoverlapping unmerged changes with `-3' or `--easy-only', and you can
select only the overlapping changes with `-x' or `--overlap-only'.
The `-e', `-3' and `-x' options select only "unmerged changes", i.e.
changes where MINE and YOURS differ; they ignore changes from OLDER to
YOURS where MINE and YOURS are identical, because they assume that such
changes have already been merged. If this assumption is not a safe
one, you can use the `-A' or `--show-all' option (*note Marking
Conflicts::.).
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