Compare files ignoring numeric differences-CodePudding

I work with a codebase that has a lot of duplication. It seems the files were copied and then slightly modified, say bumping version numbers in string output and creation time-stamps.

Is there a way to tell git diff to ignore lines (a) in which only a specific number or digit is replaced by another (e.g. version_5 and version_6) or (b) in which the difference is digits only?

I know that git diff is quite flexible and I've read this answer about ignoring comments, but I don't see how I find out anything about the difference between two lines (like, if it's only digits that are different).

CodePudding user response：

There is no way to tell git diff to ignore numeric changes.

You could pre-filter the files with sed and then pass them to the regular diff command. For example, here we use sed to convert all numbers to _, and compare the current version of the file to the version in the parent commit:

diff -u \
  <(git show HEAD:path/to/file | sed 's/[0-9]/_/g') \
  <(git show HEAD^:path/to/file | sed 's/[0-9]/_/g')