How will text-based comparison work?
Posted: Tue Nov 02, 2004 10:41 pm
Back in August of 2002 I asked the following question, and received your answer below. How will this work in 3.0?
> I have been using wincmp extensively for some time now but have just
> now begun using winsin. I find I have a problem with using it effectively.
>
> I want to compare two directories containing program source files,
> ignoring the timestamps of the files and comparing based on contents
> only. I see how to set up winsin to do this, but the results of its
> file comparisons do not agree with wincmp's! That is, if I select a
> pair of files that winsin tells me are different and run wincmp from
> the popup menu, wincmp tells me they are identical. This makes the use
> of winsin much more difficult, because I must manually select and
> compare each pair of files that winsin tells me are differenct, to see
> if they are really different.
You are right, Synchronize It! uses plain (and fast) byte-to-byte comparison, while Compare It! use text based comparison with extended rules to ignore blanks, case etc. In future releases Synchronize It! will be able to call Compare It! for doing exact comparison, but currently this option is unavailable yet.
> I have been using wincmp extensively for some time now but have just
> now begun using winsin. I find I have a problem with using it effectively.
>
> I want to compare two directories containing program source files,
> ignoring the timestamps of the files and comparing based on contents
> only. I see how to set up winsin to do this, but the results of its
> file comparisons do not agree with wincmp's! That is, if I select a
> pair of files that winsin tells me are different and run wincmp from
> the popup menu, wincmp tells me they are identical. This makes the use
> of winsin much more difficult, because I must manually select and
> compare each pair of files that winsin tells me are differenct, to see
> if they are really different.
You are right, Synchronize It! uses plain (and fast) byte-to-byte comparison, while Compare It! use text based comparison with extended rules to ignore blanks, case etc. In future releases Synchronize It! will be able to call Compare It! for doing exact comparison, but currently this option is unavailable yet.