How to get diff for NOT follow symbolic links?

Question

I use difftwo huge volumes to compare, and it actually compares a lot of symbolic files over and over again.

Is there any way to stop this? I want him to simply compare the link; do not follow him.

Or is there an alternative application that has this setting?

Answer 1

There is an argument --no-dereference, which is not mentioned in the man page but the diff --help listed.

diff -r --no-dereference  dir1 dir2