TL;DR : vim -d <file1> <file2>
Comparing changes in files from time to time is very much the part and parcel of a Linux Admin.’s life. The diff command is pretty well known and handy, but what it lacks is the color coding option to make the comparisons more readable!
I found a similar question on stackoverflow -> How to colorize diff on the command line? , but I needed something which also highlights the exact difference eg. the ‘.’ or various versions of <‘ ` “> which creep in the scripts and make devops difficult!
colordiff <file1> <file2> seems to provide partial solution. It color codes and improves readability, but does no assistance in highlighting in exact modifications.
vim comes to rescue here! vimdiff is the command I was looking for. It also, allows you to compare up to four files at the same instance.
vim -d is an alias for vimdiff and can be used as
vim -d /path/to/file1 /path/to/file2
You get the line which has changes, as well as the modified part highlighted.
