I am not sure this is a duplicate since the other issue was about newline at the end of strings. This is about the diff being little irrelevant even with newline in the end for strings. Sample program where change in 5th character gives the reported diff.

import difflib

for i in range(7):
    print(f"Change character at {i}")
    a = list("drwxrwxr-x 2 2000  2000\n")
    b = "drwxrwxr-x 2 2000  2000\n"
    a[i] = '-'
    a = ''.join(a)
    print(''.join(difflib.ndiff([a], [b])))

Change character at 0
- -rwxrwxr-x 2 2000  2000
? ^
+ drwxrwxr-x 2 2000  2000
? ^

Change character at 1
- d-wxrwxr-x 2 2000  2000
?  ^
+ drwxrwxr-x 2 2000  2000
?  ^

Change character at 2
- dr-xrwxr-x 2 2000  2000
?   ^
+ drwxrwxr-x 2 2000  2000
?   ^

Change character at 3
- drw-rwxr-x 2 2000  2000
?    ^
+ drwxrwxr-x 2 2000  2000
?    ^

Change character at 4
- drwx-wxr-x 2 2000  2000
?     ^
+ drwxrwxr-x 2 2000  2000
?     ^

Change character at 5
- drwxr-xr-x 2 2000  2000
?        ---
+ drwxrwxr-x 2 2000  2000
?  +++

Change character at 6
- drwxrw-r-x 2 2000  2000
?       ^
+ drwxrwxr-x 2 2000  2000
?       ^