diff
Shares rank 59 of 86 privilege escalation tools by recommenders
A long-standing Unix command that compares files line by line, recommended as solid, simple and reliable for everyday file comparison.
A long-standing Unix command that compares files line by line, recommended as solid, simple and reliable for everyday file comparison.
7 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 6
- criticize it
- 1
- approval share
- 86%
Recommended in 4 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 6 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 6 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 4 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Solid, simple tool for file comparison
“I think that regular black-and-white /bin/diff is solid for that kind of job.”
Comment from 3 Feb 2026 in “Show HN: Difi – Git diff TUI with NVIM support built with Go and Bubbletea” “You could have also ran diff on both files and gotten a reasonable diff.”
Comment from 15 Dec 2025 in “AI agents are starting to eat SaaS” “diff is a good one though!”
Comment from 12 Dec 2025 in “Programmers and software developers lost the plot on naming their tools” Handy for everyday quick checks
“sometimes I use `diff` to help with that”
Comment from 1 Feb 2026 in “In Praise Of –Dry-Run” “diff is a good one though!”
Comment from 12 Dec 2025 in “Programmers and software developers lost the plot on naming their tools”
Other privilege escalation tools people recommend
The four most recommended other privilege escalation tools, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
See all 86 privilege escalation tools, rankedWhat people said
All 7 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“Worthwhile subscribing to the free tier, although there is a lot of referencing to paid tier content.”
“Claude Code would be far less useful without grep, diff, git, head”
“I think that regular black-and-white /bin/diff is solid for that kind of job.”
“sometimes I use `diff` to help with that”
“You could have also ran diff on both files and gotten a reasonable diff.”
“diff is a good one though!”
“it is the tooling, i.e., Git and Diff, that is ancient and not remotely modern”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.