Get a load of vimdiff!

I assume that being any *nix junkie, you would know what diff is used for. But plain diff sucks - it is not very clear as to which files had what in them. One first executes


Try vimdiff instead - the color coding of differences is very nice,(especially when vim folds all the code that is common).
Alternately, go for the gui - gvimdiff.

Usage(there is just one step here):

$gvimdiff file1 file2

Here is another goodie - you can edit file1 or file2 when they are opened in gvimdiff. Thus, you can make one file look like another while viewing the differences - how cool is that?

Lets make it more better, eh?

Assume you are editing file1 using vim, and now you want to do a diff with file2

All what you need is to type the following commands within vim!

:sp file2
:windo diffthis