How do I diff utf-16 files with GNU diff?

skiphoppy picture skiphoppy · Apr 22, 2009 · Viewed 9.5k times · Source

GNU diff doesn't seem to be smart enough to detect and handle UTF-16 files, which surprises me. Am I missing an obvious command-line option? Is there a good alternative?

Answer

Jean Regisser picture Jean Regisser · Nov 13, 2009

vimdiff works quite nicely for this purpose.

I found it while reading this StackOverflow answer.