Useful bash helpers

Diff two files with long lines

I wrote this function when I wanted to compare the build output for an angular project. Super long lines were what I had to battle with, fold --spaces helps with that. The output was easier to read with diff’s --side-by-side and --suppress-common-lines cuts it down to only the parts that changed. For a longer comparison piping the output to less -r does wonders.

function difflonglines {
    colordiff --side-by-side --suppress-common-lines ${@:3} <(fold --spaces $1) <(fold --spaces $2)
}