Diff generated patch Baby diff could return commands for "ed", the editor: diff -e In his youth, he learnt to show context around differences to be more pleasant for men: diff -c Once grown up, he learnt to be terse to be more pleasant for machines and networks: diff -u The "patch" command, initially written by Larry Wall, uses diff's output to change into It's used to "patch" a wrong file into a correct one Patch files are just diff's output saved to file