Topic: Wishful thinking?

Hi Jeff,

I was just wondering whether it would be practical to add a 'Compare Files' Edit menu item to SF? Specifically, when two similar program file versions are displayed side-by-side (left and right panels displayed), selecting 'Compare Files' would highlight the differences in the two versions, allowing the easy identification of the revisions. If this requires a lot of effort, it may not be a practical addition, but I thought that I'd ask the question.

Frank

Re: Wishful thinking?

One of the challenges with a "compare" program is, "Where do you stop and start comparing again?". It is easy to find the first difference. But, what's your method for stopping that "difference" occurrence to look for the next one?

It's been done. And a line-by-line scheme is trivial. But is one If statement, completed in one line, compared to another IF statement, with the same code but extended over two lines, different?

How would you parse this, "Therewasabundanceonthethanksgivingtable"? Is it a statement about bounty or miraculous dancing?

Re: Wishful thinking?

drfrank wrote:

Hi Jeff,

I was just wondering whether it would be practical to add a 'Compare Files' Edit menu item to SF? Specifically, when two similar program file versions are displayed side-by-side (left and right panels displayed), selecting 'Compare Files' would highlight the differences in the two versions, allowing the easy identification of the revisions. If this requires a lot of effort, it may not be a practical addition, but I thought that I'd ask the question.

Frank

Could you please elaborate what "compare files" means? In my opinion to compare is not as easy task as you imagine at the first glance. I have ExamDiff Pro on the board. It gives many different variants how source files can be compared - igonring case, line breaks, comments, white spaces etc etc. So I suggest rather to look for any specialized compare tool.

  • jeff
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Re: Wishful thinking?

Comparing files would be the equivalent of integrating a diff tool into Simply Fortran directly.  It is possible to do so, but it would be by no means trivial.  It would almost certainly have to be included in a major release (i.e. version 4.0) just based on the scale of the work.  I'm not saying it can't be added, just that it is quite a complex task.  Aside from the comparison (which is complicated on its own), there are countless controls, menus, and buttons that would need to be wired up to handle all the tasks associated with a diff tool.

If you're on Windows, WinMerge is my preferred tool for comparing files.  On other systems, I use Meld regularly.  I'm not sure something integrated would ever live up to either of those standalone tools, but something useful could be integrated.

Jeff Armstrong
Approximatrix, LLC

Re: Wishful thinking?

Hi Jeff,

Thanks for your reply. I was not aware of the freely available diff WinMerge. Given the responses to my post, I see no reason to put any effort in adding a diff to SF. I will try WinMerge.

Frank