1.3 Suppressing Differences in Blank Lines

The ‘-B’ and ‘--ignore-blank-lines’ options ignore insertions or deletions of blank lines. These options affect only lines that are completely empty; they do not affect lines that look empty but contain space or tab characters. With these options, for example, a file containing

1.  A point is that which has no part.

2.  A line is breadthless length.
-- Euclid, The Elements, I

is considered identical to a file containing

1.  A point is that which has no part.
2.  A line is breadthless length.


-- Euclid, The Elements, I