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Incomplete Lines
When an input file ends in a non-newline character, its last line is
called an incomplete line because its last character is not a
newline. All other lines are called full lines and end in a
newline character. Incomplete lines do not match full lines unless
differences in white space are ignored (see White Space).
An incomplete line is normally distinguished on output from a full line
by a following line that starts with \. However, the RCS format
(see RCS) outputs the incomplete line as-is, without any trailing
newline or following line. The side by side format normally represents
incomplete lines as-is, but in some cases uses a \ or /
gutter marker; See Side by Side. The if-then-else line format
preserves a line's incompleteness with %L, and discards the
newline with %l; See Line Formats. Finally, with the
ed and forward ed output formats (see Output Formats)
diff cannot represent an incomplete line, so it pretends there
was a newline and reports an error.
For example, suppose F and G are one-byte files that
contain just f and g, respectively. Then diff F G
outputs
1c1
< f
\ No newline at end of file
---
> g
\ No newline at end of file
(The exact message may differ in non-English locales.)
diff -n F G outputs the following without a trailing newline:
d1 1
a1 1
g
diff -e F G reports two errors and outputs the following:
1c
g
.
