This greatly reduces that work required to determine how similar two files are and which versions are the best match. You will find that for most duplicated file names and/or branched files, any two file names have a common (exact match) version. Beyond that common version, the files will diverge. This File Comparator filters non-effective changes so you can focus on changes that impact how the code works. Some features include:
- Filter out non-effective code changes
- Normalize white-space
- Identify split and merged lines
- Filter changes involving source code formatting:
- In C++, there are several formatting routines accepted as standards. Most variations revolve around where to place the left-brace and right-brace. File Comparator detects these variations as non-effective.
- Identify change of effectiveness of lines based on other line changes
- Addition of block comments (/* */) effectively deletes the code. Most file comparison utilities will not identify this.
- Removal of block comments (/* */) effectively adds the code. Most file comparison utilities will not identify this.
- Ignore trailing comments ( // in C++ and Java) so that otherwise unchanged code lines are not flagged as changes. This means the following two lines would not be flagged as changed:
- Line1 - int nLineCount = 1;
- Line2 - int nLineCount = 1; //Was 0
- Provide line counts (how many total lines) and group (contiguous lines) counts for each of the following:
- Inserted - Added to the target version
- Deleted - Deleted from the source version
- Modified - Modified from source version to target version
- The group count provides a quick measure of the complexity of the changes while the line counts provide a measure of the extent/size of the changes.
- Quick comparison of all source versions to all target versions.
- When two files are selected for comparison, File Comparator compares the current version of the source file with all versions of the target file. A summary of the results is displayed. From this summary, the user may select any version to view the details of the comparison.
- The user may also iterate through each version of the source file and see the summary/detail information as desired.