GNU bug report logs - #40018
How to diff PDF files?

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Message #5 received at submit <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Peng Yu <pengyu.ut <at> gmail.com>
To: bug-diffutils <bug-diffutils <at> gnu.org>
Subject: How to diff PDF files?
Date: Tue, 10 Mar 2020 16:15:52 -0500

Hi,

I'd like to diff PDF files.

$ seq 10 | gs -q -P- -dSAFER -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH -sDEVICE=pdfwrite
-dCompatibilityLevel=1.4 -sstdout=%stderr -sOutputFile=1.pdf -f -
$ pdftk 1.pdf output 2.pdf uncompress
$ diff {1,2}.pdf
Binary files 1.pdf and 2.pdf differ

Since PDF files contains both texts and binaries, just saying that
they are binary files and refusing to show the difference is not very
helpful. Is there a way for me to easily see the differences between
PDF files. Thanks.

-- 
Regards,
Peng

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