Detailed Description of Unified Format

The unified output format starts with a two-line header, which looks like this:

--- from-file from-file-modification-time
+++ to-file to-file-modification-time

You can change the header's content with the `-L label' or `--label=label' option; see See section Showing Alternate File Names.

Next come one or more hunks of differences; each hunk shows one area where the files differ. Unified format hunks look like this:

@@ from-file-range to-file-range @@
 line-from-either-file
 line-from-either-file...

The lines common to both files begin with a space character. The lines that actually differ between the two files have one of the following indicator characters in the left column:

`+'

A line was added here to the first file.

`-'

A line was removed here from the first file.