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How to diff large files on Linux

Fresh3 days ago
Mar 15, 202639156 views
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Problem

I'm getting a error when trying to diff two 27 GB files that are largely similar on a Linux box with CentOS 5 and 4 GB of RAM. This is a known problem, it seems. I would expect there to be an alternative for such an essential utility, but I can't find one. I imagine the solution would have to use t…

Error Output

diff: memory exhausted

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1 Fix

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Fix for: How to diff large files on Linux

Low Risk

does things byte-by-byte, so it probably won't run out of memory (just tested it on two 7 GB files) -- but you might be looking for more detail than a list of "files X and Y differ at byte x, line y". If the similarities of your files are offset (e.…

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Environment