Comparing entire directories

[Robert P. J. Day]

On Fri, 23 Jul 2004, Serge de Souza wrote:

> J.L. Coenders wrote:
>> Hi,
>> Is there some command for comparing entire directories? Like a recursive 
>> md5sum, which for instance checks if all files and directories (including 
>> hidden, etc.) are present in the copied location.
>> 
>> Thanks,
>> - Jeroen
>
> diff -r dir1 dir2

and while we're on the topic, if you want to start generating patches 
for diffs between directories, there's the nifty little "gendiff" 
utility that's part of the rpm package.

rday