Merged revisions 80004 via svnmerge from
svn+ssh://pythondev@svn.python.org/python/trunk

........
  r80004 | r.david.murray | 2010-04-12 12:35:19 -0400 (Mon, 12 Apr 2010) | 13 lines

  Issue #7585: use tab between components in unified and context diff headers.

  Instead of spaces between the filename and date (or whatever the string
  is that follows the filename, if any) use tabs.  This is what the unix
  'diff' command does, for example, and difflib was intended to follow
  the 'standard' way of doing diffs.  This improves compatibility with
  patch tools.  The docs and examples are also changed to recommended that
  the date format used be the ISO 8601 format, which is what modern diff
  tools emit by default.

  Patch by Anatoly Techtonik.
........
diff --git a/Lib/difflib.py b/Lib/difflib.py
index 292bba9..92d58fa 100644
--- a/Lib/difflib.py
+++ b/Lib/difflib.py
@@ -1160,18 +1160,18 @@
 
     The unidiff format normally has a header for filenames and modification
     times.  Any or all of these may be specified using strings for
-    'fromfile', 'tofile', 'fromfiledate', and 'tofiledate'.  The modification
-    times are normally expressed in the format returned by time.ctime().
+    'fromfile', 'tofile', 'fromfiledate', and 'tofiledate'.
+    The modification times are normally expressed in the ISO 8601 format.
 
     Example:
 
     >>> for line in unified_diff('one two three four'.split(),
     ...             'zero one tree four'.split(), 'Original', 'Current',
-    ...             'Sat Jan 26 23:30:50 1991', 'Fri Jun 06 10:20:52 2003',
+    ...             '2005-01-26 23:30:50', '2010-04-02 10:20:52',
     ...             lineterm=''):
-    ...     print(line)
-    --- Original Sat Jan 26 23:30:50 1991
-    +++ Current Fri Jun 06 10:20:52 2003
+    ...     print(line)                 # doctest: +NORMALIZE_WHITESPACE
+    --- Original        2005-01-26 23:30:50
+    +++ Current         2010-04-02 10:20:52
     @@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
     +zero
      one
@@ -1184,8 +1184,10 @@
     started = False
     for group in SequenceMatcher(None,a,b).get_grouped_opcodes(n):
         if not started:
-            yield '--- %s %s%s' % (fromfile, fromfiledate, lineterm)
-            yield '+++ %s %s%s' % (tofile, tofiledate, lineterm)
+            fromdate = '\t%s' % fromfiledate if fromfiledate else ''
+            todate = '\t%s' % tofiledate if tofiledate else ''
+            yield '--- %s%s%s' % (fromfile, fromdate, lineterm)
+            yield '+++ %s%s%s' % (tofile, todate, lineterm)
             started = True
         i1, i2, j1, j2 = group[0][1], group[-1][2], group[0][3], group[-1][4]
         yield "@@ -%d,%d +%d,%d @@%s" % (i1+1, i2-i1, j1+1, j2-j1, lineterm)
@@ -1223,17 +1225,16 @@
     The context diff format normally has a header for filenames and
     modification times.  Any or all of these may be specified using
     strings for 'fromfile', 'tofile', 'fromfiledate', and 'tofiledate'.
-    The modification times are normally expressed in the format returned
-    by time.ctime().  If not specified, the strings default to blanks.
+    The modification times are normally expressed in the ISO 8601 format.
+    If not specified, the strings default to blanks.
 
     Example:
 
     >>> print(''.join(context_diff('one\ntwo\nthree\nfour\n'.splitlines(1),
-    ...       'zero\none\ntree\nfour\n'.splitlines(1), 'Original', 'Current',
-    ...       'Sat Jan 26 23:30:50 1991', 'Fri Jun 06 10:22:46 2003')),
+    ...       'zero\none\ntree\nfour\n'.splitlines(1), 'Original', 'Current')),
     ...       end="")
-    *** Original Sat Jan 26 23:30:50 1991
-    --- Current Fri Jun 06 10:22:46 2003
+    *** Original
+    --- Current
     ***************
     *** 1,4 ****
       one
@@ -1251,8 +1252,10 @@
     prefixmap = {'insert':'+ ', 'delete':'- ', 'replace':'! ', 'equal':'  '}
     for group in SequenceMatcher(None,a,b).get_grouped_opcodes(n):
         if not started:
-            yield '*** %s %s%s' % (fromfile, fromfiledate, lineterm)
-            yield '--- %s %s%s' % (tofile, tofiledate, lineterm)
+            fromdate = '\t%s' % fromfiledate if fromfiledate else ''
+            todate = '\t%s' % tofiledate if tofiledate else ''
+            yield '*** %s%s%s' % (fromfile, fromdate, lineterm)
+            yield '--- %s%s%s' % (tofile, todate, lineterm)
             started = True
 
         yield '***************%s' % (lineterm,)