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

Question

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 1

Malforms patches when accent marks or special characters are used:

 diff --version
 diff (GNU diffutils) 3.6
 diff -Naur old_foo new_foo > foo.patch

Correctly handles accent marks or special characters regardless of whether compared files/dirs are in a git folder.

 git --version
 git version 2.17.1
 git diff --no-index old_foo new_foo > foo.patch