When diff is not enough

By: H.Merijn Brand (‎Tux‎) from Amsterdam.pm , perl6.pm
Date: Wednesday, 15 August 2018 10:30
Duration: 50 minutes
Target audience: Any
Language: English
Tags: cli diff gui


Unix, Linux, and Windows offer a large variety of tools that can show the differences between two (text)files. Some even show the differences of 3 or more or have options to do recursive scanning of folders/directories.

This talk will show examples of text files that changed beyond the scope of what existing tools can show.
I will show you all the tools (I found) and their deficiencies or drawbacks.

The fact that I did not find a tools that clearly and reliably showed the changes in a useful way (YMMV) made me create a new tool, written in perl, that will help to show these kind of differences. I will show the tool, its usage, its outputs and what type of problems it is (very) useful for.
I will show you the options it supports, why it supports them and why some (requested) options are not (yet) supported.

If time permits, I'll also show how you can integrate it in git.


Attended by: Diego Kuperman (‎diegok‎), Todd Rinaldo (‎toddr‎), H.Merijn Brand (‎Tux‎), John Lightsey (‎J.D.‎), Dagfinn Ilmari Mannsåker (‎ilmari‎), Dimitrios Kechagias, Salve J. Nilsen (‎sjn‎), Choroba, Renee Bäcker (‎reneeb‎), Laurent Rosenfeld (‎lolo78‎), Szymon Nieznański, Barbie, Ilya Chesnokov (‎ichesnokov‎), Eitan Schuler, Jean Forget, Roland Schmitz (‎roli‎), Paul Cochrane (‎ptc‎), Jon André Hjellestad (‎Jonis‎), Igor Bujna, Johnathan Swan, Nikolas Kuimcidis, Nicholas Clark, Snorri Briem, Gregor Goldbach (‎glauschwuffel‎), Richard van Lochem (‎rvlochem‎), Chris Jack, Dave Sherohman (‎dsheroh‎), Jan Seidl (‎JaSei‎), Jean-Baptiste Mazon, Martin Barth (‎ufobat‎), Joelle Maslak, atoomic, Johan Lindstrom, Steve Rogerson, Patrick Ringl (‎pari‎), Maria Hedberg, Moray Jones, Thorsten Pape, Erik Johansen (‎uniejo‎), Paul Evans (‎LeoNerd‎), Michael Lush, Aaron Crane (‎arc‎), Max Maischein (‎Corion‎), Gianni Ceccarelli (‎dakkar‎), Sam Anderson (‎Sam‎), Daniel Mita (‎⚡🍡‎), Søren Lund (‎slu‎), Andreas Boesen (‎Happy‎), Dan Muey, Simon Proctor (‎Scimon‎), Abe Timmerman (‎abeltje‎), Andreas Huber, Andrew Nugged (nugged)

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