Looking for "diff"-like code to find differences between two files

[Richard Harter]

In article <1990Oct15.035844.162 at midway.uchicago.edu>, gft_robert at gsbacd.uchicago.edu writes:
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"I'm working on a project on the Mac in which we need to compare the text of two
 files.  We need to do this on a character-by-character basis, not merely
 line-by-line, because we need to go back and indicate which words/chars were
 deleted and added...
 
 We were looking at the GNU diff routine, but from looking at the source it
 seems that this may only output info on a line-by-line basis (we don't have the
 man pages and haven't built it yet, so I don't know for sure).
 
 While the resulting app may end up running under A/UX, basically it will be a
 Macintosh app.  I'm posting this to the unix groups in the hope that there may
 be a unix tool which we can adapt to our purposes.  Of course if someone has
 some sample code which is not made for unix, that would be fine too."

If you are mostly interested in document comparison on the MAC I can
recommend Docucomp from

	Advanced Software Inc.
	1095 E. Duane Ave #100
	Sunnyvale CA 94086

It does a character/word diff on two files, displays them side by side,
and marks differences with different fonts (deleted words are crossed out.)
This may be exactly what you are looking for.

If you must have a UNIX solution and can't find anything more appropriate
SMDS does have a character difference program.  It was designed to be
used in conjunction with binary file version control -- the output is
a specification of the number of bytes inserted and deleted at each change
point.  Contact us if all else fails.  However I suspect that docucomp does
what you want.
-- 
Richard Harter, Software Maintenance and Development Systems, Inc.
Net address: jjmhome!smds!rh Phone: 508-369-7398 
US Mail: SMDS Inc., PO Box 555, Concord MA 01742
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