diff(1) -N behaviour - Bug 233402

[Fehmi Noyan ISI]

Hiya

Apparently, after we switched from GNU diff to BSD diff, the -N flag no longer assumes absent files as empty.
There is a bug report about GNU diff compatibility but when I look at diff(1) man page, I see that not treating absent files as empty is intentional rather than a missing functionality.

If this is not the case, I can work on patch to match to GNU diff behaviour, otherwise, this bug report can be closed I think.

What’s your take on this?

-N --new-file
    If a file is found in only one directory, act as if it was found
    in the other directory too but was of zero size.

man for GNU diff
-N, --new-file
    treat absent files as empty

Fehmi