difference between svn and regular merge?

Greetings-

Is there any difference between how svn merges, and regular command-line
merge? I've asked some folks about this before, and the answer is usually a
vague "svn uses the file history data". I don't understand what that
means... I can't imagine what extra data a program could have about the
differences between two files. Or is the magic in the merging... does it
somehow incrementally and therefore more "carefully" do the merges into the
3rd file?

Or is there no difference at all, it's just much more convenient than
exporting each version and then performing the merge manually?

Thanks,
John
Received on Sun Apr 30 10:26:58 2006