Recursive diff on directories says files differ, but no output when I diff on the files

(in the Linux Terminal)

I used

diff --recursive --brief dir1 dir2

and it tells me that

File dir1/file and dir2/file differ

But then, I try:

diff dir1/file dir2/file

and there is no output (which I assume means it found no differences between the files this time).... What gives?

1 Answer

I think your --brief is the problem ... without this option also it will only compare files with same name..