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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-31T20:32:32+00:00

When editing documents I always stick to a certain line width of max 80

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When editing documents I always stick to a certain line width of max 80 or 150 characters, depends what I am writing (code, text, etc.). If I change only a little the whole paragraph will shift and hence multiple lines are now in different order to optimal fit for the given line width. How do I diff this to see the actual real change an not the rewrapping artifacts?

Example, textwidth=30:
enter image description here

The actual changes are rather tiny:

  • line 9 insert: “Now I change a little”
  • line 15 insert: “Fill in here something and write totally new stuff with much more lines. “
  • line 18 change: s/Duis/TYPO/

The fact that I use (g)vimdiff here is of no matter, if other software can accomplish the desired diff.

Of course software is designed to wrap automatically when text reaches window borders, so I also tried to use just line breaks in the end of a paragraph. The reason why this is not good is, that automatically diffs are line based, and for small changes in paragraphs I get the whole line, meaning then the whole paragraph as diff update :(.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    GNU wdiff does a word-by-word diff, not treating spaces and new lines any differently. One can even find vim syntax files for it (e.g. here).

    $ cat file1
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur
adipiscing elit. Aenean vel molestie
nulla. Pellentesque placerat lacus vel
eros malesuada tristique. Nulla vitae
volutpat justo. Donec est mauris,

$ cat file2
Lorem amet, consectetur adipiscing some
inserted text! elit. Aenean vel molestie
nulla. Pellentesque placerat lacus vel
eros malesuada replacement. Nulla vitae
volutpat justo. Donec est mauris,

$ wdiff file1 file2
Lorem [-ipsum dolor sit-] amet, consectetur
adipiscing {+some inserted text!+} elit. Aenean vel molestie
nulla. Pellentesque placerat lacus vel
eros malesuada [-tristique.-] {+replacement.+} Nulla vitae
volutpat justo. Donec est mauris

    ([- ... -] is deleted text, {+ ... +} is inserted text).

    (There are other diff programs that do a similar thing: e.g. adiff, and maybe some of the ones listed in https://stackoverflow.com/questions/12625/best-diff-tool)

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