English

Noun

diff ‎(plural diffs)

1. (slang) Abbreviation of difference.

   A peach and an apricot? What's the diff?

2. (computing) Any program which compares two files or sets of files and outputs a description of the differences between them.
3. (computing) The output of a diff program. A diff file.
   • 2004, Paul Graham, Great Hackers, Essay:

     I didn't want to waste people's time telling them things they already knew. It's more efficient just to give them the diffs.

4. (medicine) Abbreviation of differential: differential of types of white blood cell in a complete blood count.
5. (rock climbing) A difficult route.

Verb

diff ‎(third-person singular simple present diffs, present participle diffing, simple past and past participle diffed)

1. (transitive, computing) To run a diff program on (files or items) so as to produce a description of the differences between them, as for a patch file.
2. (transitive, computing) To compare two files or other objects, manually or otherwise.

Proper noun

diff

1. (computing) A program, historically part of the Unix operating system, which compares two files or sets of files and outputs a description of the differences between them.

See also

• (computing) patch

Related terms

• (computing) diff file