Diff two tabs in Vim

vim diff tabs vimdiff buffer
davetapley picture davetapley · Jul 8, 2009 · Viewed 37.8k times · Source

Scenario: I have opened Vim and pasted some text. I open a second tab with :tabe and paste some other text in there.

Goal: I would like a third tab with a output equivalent to writing both texts to files and opening them with vimdiff.

The closest I can find is "diff the current buffer against a file", but not diffing two open but unsaved buffers.

Answer

Jan picture Jan · Jul 8, 2009

I suggest opening the second file in the same tab instead of a new one.

Here's what I usually do:

:edit file1
:diffthis
:vnew
:edit file2
:diffthis

The :vnew command splits the current view vertically so you can open the second file there. The :diffthis (or short: :difft) command is then applied to each view.

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