Installation

Depending on if you want only this tool, the full set of PNU tools, or PNU plus a selection of additional third-parties tools, use one of these commands:

pip install pnu-dcmp
pip install PNU
pip install pytnix

DCMP(1)

NAME

dcmp - compare two directories, deduplicating if needed

SYNOPSIS

dcmp [--dedup] [-h|--nosymlinks] [-s|--silent|--quiet] [-v|--verbose] [--debug] [--help|-?] [--version] [--] directory1 directory2

DESCRIPTION

The dcmp utility compares two directories contents and writes the results to the standard output. By default, dcmp is silent if the directories are the same; if they differ, the differences are reported with a leading:

• '!' if files contents are different
• '+' if the file or directory appears in directory1 but not in directory2
• '-' if the file or directory appears in directory2 but not in directory1
• '=' if the files contents are identical and you used the -v|--verbose option

If you use the -s|--silent|--quiet option, differences won't be reported and the overall result will be returned though the exit status (thus stopping the comparison at the first difference).

By default, dcmp follows symbolic links to directories, unless you tell it not to do so with the -h|--nosymlinks option, or you use the --dedup option for deduplicating the first directory, removing identical files (ie. those having the same SHA-256 message digest) and symbolic links, as well as empty directories sitting there.

OPTIONS

The following options are available:

ENVIRONMENT

The DCMP_DEBUG environment variable can also be set to any value to enable debug mode.

EXIT STATUS

The dcmp utility exits with one of the following values:

• 0: The directories are identical
• 1: The directories are different
• >1: An error occurred

SEE ALSO

cmp(1), sha256(1)

STANDARDS

The dcmp utility is not a standard UNIX command.

This implementation tries to follow the PEP 8 style guide for Python code.

PORTABILITY

To be tested under Windows.

HISTORY

This implementation was made for the PNU project.

The dcmp utility was made to help spot potential differences between restored backups and current files and directories.

LICENSE

It is available under the 3-clause BSD license.

AUTHORS

Hubert Tournier