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created March 15, 2004 · complexity basic · author jimi · version 6.0
I was having problems getting the diff utility to work running version 6.2 of Vim from within Windows. I loaded SFU 3.5, Services for Unix, onto Windows XP SP1, to try and take advantage of the included diff utility. Basically what I have found is that it works out of the box, so long as you do not specify the "icase" parameter with diffopt.
That is, if you have:
diffopt=filler,context:2,icase,iwhite
you will receive E97: Cannot create diffs. However, if you simply remove the icase parameter and have:
diffopt=filler,context:2,iwhite
Diff will work just fine with SFU 3.5, no special functions or scripts required. Unless, of cource, you want to ignore case.
Comments
I don't know anything about SFU, but to get diff to work under Windows (XP SP1) I just had to add another set of double quotes around the diff command in vimrc inside the MyDiff() function. So, an extra one just before the C of the C: drive and at the end of the string.
silent execute '!""C:\Program Files\vim\vim62\diff" -a ' . opt . '"' . v:fname_in . '" "' . v:fname_new . '" > "' . v:fname_out . '""'
In my config, also the icase clause works. Maybe, this solution works for you too.
Here are my settings for vim/win98.
It only works with gnu diff.exe (get it from google search). Gnu diff is a necessity for serious work anyway, All other diffs don't support the heavy duty options. Note that shell quotes are different for command.com/win98,cmd.exe/nt.
On linux and other unixes, 'vim -d' should work out of the box because of bash/sh/gnu-diff.
> ver windows 98 > cat _vimrc set shell=command.com shellquote="" shellxquote="" shellpipe=> set shellredir=> set diffexpr="" diffopt=filler,iwhite,icase,context:6 >diff.exe -v1 GNU diff version 2.3 > vim -od x y > vim -V -od x y ... to see how diff is called, if you have problems.
The first entry on VimTip416 saved my day!