Subject: Re: [bug-diffutils] bug#20062: bug#20062: [PATCH] diff: add support for --color

From: Paul Eggert <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 10 Mar 2015 17:06:36 -0700

Giuseppe Scrivano wrote:
> the
> most it can hang is the time needed to print a single line.

There's no limit on line length though, right?  Other than available memory.  So 
this could be a problem.  ('ls' doesn't have a similar problem, if I understand 
it correctly, as OSes typically have reasonably short limits on file name length.)

>> >Also, 'diff --color' needn't mess with signal handling unless isatty
>> >(fileno (outfile)).
> Should this also be done if --color=always is used?

Yes.  diff needs to mess with signal handling only if both (1) diff is 
outputting colors and (2) the output is a terminal.  This is independent of why 
diff is doing (1).