There are many tools that allow you to find differences between files. In an article published at his time, we saw how to compare two files using various tools and methodologies. Many services that allow you to compare the contents of multiple files are also available and easily accessible online. Most of the known solutions, however, present objective difficulties in managing, for example, the programming code.
Difftastic is a tool that helps you find differences in files by comparing them syntax. Rather than carrying out a purely character-based comparison, Difftastic analyzes the internal structure of the files, with an approach that is particularly useful in the case of programming languagesin which the structure of the code plays a crucial role.
A fantastic tool for finding differences in files and programming code
First of all, unlike traditional tools, Difftastic understands the structure of nested code blocks. For example, if a function And indented differently between two versions of the file but the code does not change, Difftastic will indicate the code as identical rather than highlighting differences that, in practice, do not exist.
An advanced tool like Difftastic also includes possible misaligned lines. Here too, imagine that a function is moved up or down in two rows: the application is able to detect and understand this.
Again, Difftastic does great with the as well line-wrapping that is, it manages those situations in which the code is broken up into multiple lines but, in fact, nothing changes in the execution of the programming code. Since it is not a significant syntax practice, Difftastic does not consider it a change.
Difftastic supports over 30 programming languages, proving itself as a truly flexible solution for a wide range of uses.
This short demonstration video summarizes all the points covered so far.
As can be seen in the image reproduced in the figure, the contents of two files are placed side by side: the elements removed compared to the other version of the file are highlighted in red, those added are highlighted in green. As you can see, the reference to "eric" is not highlighted even though it is on a subsequent line (line-wrapping). And this is absolutely correct, precisely because the structure does not change dell’array.
Finally, Difftastic can be used with Git by following the instructions on GitHub. Regarding its structure, it is open source software under the MIT license.
What are the “cons” of a solution like Difftastic
A tool like Difftastic, as anticipated in the introduction, is truly valuable for those who work with programming code every day and are used to “getting their hands dirty”. With all due respect to Jensen Huang, CEO of NVIDIA.
Difftastic, however, is not perfect and there are situations where it may inexplicably crash. The most obvious flaw, however, concerns the management of files with a large number of modifications. Processing them can be tiring and require a lot of memory.
Furthermore, Difftastic does not currently generate “patch” i.e. file to use to apply changes to previous versions. Furthermore, it does not address the difficult problem of merging AST (Abstract Syntax Tree). AST is a structured representation of the source code of a program, where each node corresponds to a syntactic entity such as a variable declaration, a conditional expression, or a function. When editing a program by several people in parallel, they may arise conflicts between the different interventions applied to similar parts of the code.
While Difftastic is effective in compare two versions of a program to highlight differences in their syntactic structure, it does not provide functionality to automatically resolve conflicts between versions.