---
name: "VCP::DiffFormat"
section: "3pm"
platform: "linux"
package: "libvcp-perl"
version: "0.9-20050110-1"
release: "Debian 4.0 (Etch)"
platforms: ["linux"]
url: "https://new.carta.tech/VCP::DiffFormat"
---

# VCP::DiffFormat(3pm)

## NAME

```
    VCP::DiffFormat - special diff format for VCP
```

## SYNOPSIS

```
    diff $a, $b { STYLE => "VCP::DiffFormat" };
```

## DESCRIPTION

This is a plugin output formatter for Text::Diff that generates "unified" style diffs without headers.  VCP::Dest::revml uses this to output differences for several reasons:

- •

  The Unix `"diff"` command is not available on all platforms by default, specifically WinNT.

- •

  The two line "file header" is not needed in RevML, since the meta information is captured elsewhere in the \<rev\> element, and the name and mtime of the files being compared is irrellevant; they're just some temporary files somewhere

- •

  Because RevML offers MD5 hashes of the file to verify that a diff was applied properly, all of the "-" lines present in a normal unified diff are not necesssary.  They are left in now for ease of debugging with RevML files, but may be stripped out to conserve space.

## COPYRIGHT

Copyright 2000, Perforce Software, Inc.  All Rights Reserved.

This module and the VCP package are licensed according to the terms given in the file LICENSE accompanying this distribution, a copy of which is included in vcp.

## AUTHOR

Barrie Slaymaker \<barries@slaysys.com\>