Using 'diff' (or anything else) to get character-level diff between text files

Question

I\'d like to use \'diff\' to get a both line difference between and character difference. For example, consider:

File 1

abcde
ab         


        

Answer 1

If you keep your files in Git, you can diff between versions with the diff-highlight script, which will show different lines, with differences highlighted.

Unfortunately it only works when the number of lines removed matches the number of lines added - there is stub code for when lines don't match, so presumably this could be fixed in the future.