Once upon a time Curtis Vaughan said...
Basically, the issue is this, I have 2 files: File1 File2
Both are text files. File1 was File2 a day ago. Since then File2 has had
additional information tagged on to it (it's a log file). All I want to
see is what information has been added since yesterday. So, I would
think that "diff File2 File1" should provide me with that information.
But all I ever get is a message that the files differ. I have tried
with various arguments, but no luck.
Does the message you get actually say: "*Binary* files File2 and File1
differ"? [emphasis mine].
If so, diff is seeing some non-ascii characters in the file and treating
them as binary.
Try:
$ diff -a File1 File2
-a says to treat all files as text.