svn diff not showing a diff where I expect one

Hi,

I have a repository that I'm interacting with through the perl
interface. I am in the middle of debugging an issue in which a change
is not being committed to the repository. I have not fully analyzed it
to see if I'm doing something wacky, but I saw this behavior and wanted
to know if it by itself indicates that something unexpected is happening.

This file 82.comp is displaying the behavior I was trying to track down.
  Here is a copy and paste of a series of commands. If I svn cat it,
it's empty. If I svn diff, no diff. If I cat the file itself, it has
contents (but has no newline, as you can see below. If I cat the
.svn/text-base copy of the file, it is empty.

[msouth]$ svn cat 82.comp
[msouth]$ svn diff 82.comp
[msouth]$ cat 82.comp
sports test_pagel[msouth]$ cat .svn/text-base/82.comp.svn-base
[msouth]$

Is my understanding incorrect that .svn/text-base/82.comp.svn-base is
what is compared against when an svn diff is run?

-- 
-----------------------------------------
Name : Mike South
Title : Software Developer
Company : McClatchy Interactive
Work Phone : (919) 861-1259
Work Fax : (919) 861-1300
Work Email : msouth@mcclatchyinteractive.com
AIM : msouthMI
Web Site : http://www.mcclatchyinteractive.com/
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