patch a file with the patch command

From	alex <1j9448a02@lnx159sneakemail.com.invalid>
Newsgroups	alt.os.linux
Subject	patch a file with the patch command
Date	2024-08-05 09:35 +0200
Organization	A noiseless patient Spider
Message-ID	<v8pvb6$iff4$1@dont-email.me> (permalink)

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Hello everyone.

I'll show you my file structure right away

├── middle
│   ├── orig
│   └── revised
└── orig

I access the middle directory (the working dir)

$ cd middle

Let's examine the contents of the files

$ cat orig
ORIG

$ cat ../orig
ORIG

$ cat revised
REVISED

Note that the contents of the orig and ../orig files are identical (the 
two files are identical), but that shouldn't be a big deal.

Let's create the patches

$ diff -u orig revised > patch-middle
$ diff -u ../orig revised > patch-up

Let's check the created files (the patches)

$ cat patch-middle
--- orig    2024-08-02 14:22:59.933683396 +0200
+++ revised    2024-08-02 10:17:25.108469758 +0200
@@ -1 +1 @@
-ORIG
+REVISED

$ cat patch-up
--- ../orig    2024-08-02 14:22:59.937683379 +0200
+++ revised    2024-08-02 10:17:25.108469758 +0200
@@ -1 +1 @@
-ORIG
+REVISED

It looks ok.

Note that for both files (orig and ../orig) the same revision file 
(revised) was used, but, again, this should not be a big deal.

Applying the patches

$ patch < patch-middle
patching file orig

$ patch < patch-up
patching file orig
Reversed (or previously applied) patch detected!  Assume -R? [n]
Apply anyway? [n] y
Hunk #1 FAILED at 1.
1 out of 1 hunk FAILED -- saving rejects to file orig.rej

As you can see with the patch-middle file everything works.
While with the patch-up file there is something wrong (Hunk #1 FAILED at 1).

Why?

Maybe because the ../orig file is in an external directory (a higher 
level directory "..") than the patch-up file?
So?
I honestly can't find a plausible explanation.

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patch a file with the patch command alex <1j9448a02@lnx159sneakemail.com.invalid> - 2024-08-05 09:35 +0200
  Re: patch a file with the patch command "J.O. Aho" <user@example.net> - 2024-08-05 12:43 +0200
    Re: patch a file with the patch command alex <1j9448a02@lnx159sneakemail.com.invalid> - 2024-08-05 17:33 +0200
      Re: patch a file with the patch command "J.O. Aho" <user@example.net> - 2024-08-05 23:05 +0200
        Re: patch a file with the patch command alex <1j9448a02@lnx159sneakemail.com.invalid> - 2024-08-06 07:39 +0200
          Re: patch a file with the patch command "J.O. Aho" <user@example.net> - 2024-08-06 08:06 +0200
        Re: patch a file with the patch command alex <1j9448a02@lnx159sneakemail.com.invalid> - 2024-08-06 07:36 +0200

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