$ diff -q directory-1/ directory-2/Īgain diff doesn’t go into the subdirectories, but we can use the -r switch to read the subdirectories as well like this. In this command, the -q switch tells diff to report only when files differ. The conventional syntax for running diff is as follows: $ diff … FILESīy default, its output is ordered alphabetically by file/subdirectory name as shown in the screenshot below.

The question is how do we get the difference between two directories in Linux? Here, we want to know what files/subdirectories are common in the two directories, those that are present in one directory but not in the other. Normally, to compare two files in Linux, we use the diff – a simple and original Unix command-line tool that shows you the difference between two computer files compares files line by line and it is easy to use, comes with pre-installed on most if not all Linux distributions. In an earlier article, we reviewed 9 best file comparison and difference (Diff) tools for Linux and in this article, we will describe how to find the difference between two directories in Linux.

Compare 2 folders