[Info-vax] If interested with ! Linux style diff and patch on OpenVMS servers

[Steven Schweda]

> No.  But this IS a forum for discussing VMS.

   Evidence of _that_ is pretty sparse, most days.

> > Even VMS users occasionally get files from a non VMS
> > system.

> > I get lots of files from non VMS systems but I've never had
> > to use 'diff' or 'patch' (the unix variants) on them.

   And I thought that _I_ didn't get out much.  I fairly
frequently wish to feed freeware change suggestions back to
those maintaining the stuff, and they almost universally want
GNU "diff -u" reports (to be fed into GNU "patch", I assume).
And the recursive feature of GNU "diff" can be very handy for
comparing large source trees.  (Better than, say, BACKUP
/COMPARE, whose output can be overly bulky.)

   As I recall, the question was:

      How is this any different from DIFFERENCE/SLP and
      EDIT/SUM, other than for perhaps the recursive aspects?

So, given that these programs are quite incompatible with GNU
"diff" and "patch", I'd've thought that the answer was pretty
obvious.  And yet you still asked.