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A "diff" file comparison tool is a vital time and labor-saving utility, because it aids in accomplishing tedious comparisons. Thus, it is a vital part of demanding comparison processes employed by individuals, academics, legal arena, forensics field, and other professional endeavors — to identify sometimes hard-to-spot differences needed for ...
In computing, the utility diff is a data comparison tool that computes and displays the differences between the contents of files. Unlike edit distance notions used for other purposes, diff is line-oriented rather than character-oriented, but it is like Levenshtein distance in that it tries to determine the smallest set of deletions and insertions to create one file from the other.
Displaying the differences between two or more sets of data, file comparison tools can make computing simpler, and more efficient by focusing on new data and ignoring what did not change. Generically known as a diff [ 1 ] after the Unix diff utility , there are a range of ways to compare data sources and display the results.
Meld is a visual diff and merge tool, targeted at developers. It allows users to compare two or three files or directories visually, color-coding the different lines. Meld can be used for comparing files, directories, and version controlled repositories.
tkdiff uses colors to suggest differences between files and within shared lines. tkdiff is a graphical diff viewer based on the Tk framework. [1] It is capable of inter-operating with source-control systems like CVS and Subversion to show the differences between the local copy and the repository version.
Beyond Compare is a cross-platform proprietary data comparison utility. The program is able to compare files and multiple types of directories , as well as archives . [ 1 ] Beyond Compare can be configured as a difftool and mergetool of version control systems , such as git .
Delta encoding is a way of storing or transmitting data in the form of differences (deltas) between sequential data rather than complete files; more generally this is known as data differencing. Delta encoding is sometimes called delta compression , particularly where archival histories of changes are required (e.g., in revision control software ).
Xdelta is a command line program for delta encoding, which generates the difference between two files. This is similar to diff and patch, but it is targeted for binary files and does not generate human readable output. It was first released in 1997. [3] The developer of Xdelta is Joshua MacDonald, who currently maintains the program.