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Say I have unpacked a gz-compressed tar file, and do not remember what changes I made to the unpacked files, or I archived a folder a while ago and want to know what has changed to the files since.

I can use tar -zd to get an overview. Then, say it shows me file foo has changed. How can I see the changes in this file, i.e. the difference between the file on my file system and the (older) file in the archive (ideally in vimdiff, but diff output would be fine too)?

Kyss Tao
  • 123

2 Answers2

2

Use tar ... -O along with process substitution in bash.

diff ... <( tar ... -O ... file.ext ) file.ext
Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams
  • 114,604
2

Open the compressed tar file in vim, move the cursor to foo and hit Enter. Then execute

:vert diffsplit local/path/to/foo
garyjohn
  • 36,494