Diff files present in two different directories

You can use the diff command for that:

diff -bur folder1/ folder2/

This will output a recursive diff that ignore spaces, with a unified context:

• b flag means ignoring whitespace
• u flag means a unified context (3 lines before and after)
• r flag means recursive

If you are only interested to see the files that differ, you may use:

diff -qr dir_one dir_two | sort

Option "q" will only show the files that differ but not the content that differ, and "sort" will arrange the output alphabetically.

Diff has an option -r which is meant to do just that.

diff -r dir1 dir2