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How to find differences between two directories using diff

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Gotta love diff!

Finding all files and folders that are different in two locations is extremely easy. Using only two parameters we can exhaustively compare two directories, including their sub-directories and produce a list of their differences as such:

diff -qr folder-1/ folder-2/;

The -q parameter instructs diff to print only the files that are different and thus not spam us with thousands of files that are the same.

The -r parameter turns on the recursive feature which instructs diff to check all sub-folders and their files in the two directories under investigation.

Example run:

diff -qr Desktop/source/ /media/tux/My\ Disk/backup\ A/

Files Desktop/source/Camera/20191023_171328.jpg and /media/tux/My\ Disk/backup\ A/Camera/20191023_171328.jpg differ

Files Desktop/source/Camera/VID_20191011_115231.mp4 and /media/tux/My\ Disk/backup\ A/Camera/VID_20191011_115231.mp4 differ

diff: /media/xeirwn//media/tux/My\ Disk/backup\ A/Camera/IMG_20191225_165939.jpg: Input/output error

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