context diff and patch

[Doug Gwyn]

In article <954 at fig.bbn.com> rsalz at bbn.com (Rich Salz) writes:
>Using diff -e and ed are fine, as long as you are able to (naively) assume
>that nobody will add or delete a line to what you put out.

What I said was:  In any context where I would trust "patch", I would also
trust "ed" using the output of "diff -e", which is generally much less output.

I would trust NEITHER "ed" nor "patch" when modifications have been made
to the original code.  "patch" may be somewhat more likely to succeed in
such a case, but it obviously cannot be guaranteed to work right.