One of the most boring tasks updating this forum script is when I have to go through the many lines of text in a template to see what, if anything, is different. The (vbulletin) script itself does this pretty well, where it can highlight each line of markup that is new, changed or missing.

But changes within a single line of text is not really handled at all. So if I have previously edited this particular line in a template with multiple additions, modifications and/or deletions, then I can't easily tell them (the modifications) apart.

For example, let us say that I have 2 different versions of a line within a template:

OLD

NEW

Remember, I'm not comparing whole blocks of text here, just a single line!

Ideally, I want something that will highlight the differences between the two. I would expect the script or software to highlight the differences like this:

OLD

NEW

Is there something (software) out there already able to do this? I mean, something free of course . Or if not, how would I go about writing a script for me to do this easily? Just some pseudo code would be fine.

Actually, I'd rather prefer the pseudo code only.

I really don't feel like installing anything on my computer that I will need only very rarely.

So I am going to go ahead and try writing something right now...

Not sure if you might have it installed, but vimdiff will highlight line differences.

I'm not sure if there is an option to only mark the two words, as you've indicated, but I'm checking...

at the prompt: vimdiff f1 f2

EDIT:
vimdiff can handle three files. I did a minor f1 f2 f3 for a simple test. Thought this might be helpful to know. (or not)

Thank you for the suggestion, TurboPT, I am sure someone else will find it useful too.

Since I was already halfway through my script last night, I decided to go ahead and finish it this morning, and I am happy to announce that it actually works!

Online tool: Compare strings or text

Although it is not perfect, it will probably help me work on this site's update faster now. The results are also not what I had expected. For example, if I use the strings from my examples above, this is the output from the online tool:

OLD


NEW

Of course, it is probably full of bugs as well but I hope to refine it as soon as I am done with the update (of this site). As usual, any feedback is welcome.

Select the 2 versions of the file in Total Commander -> File -> Compare by content

I doubt this tool totally satisfies your needs, but it can be very helpful nevertheless.

See attached.

Best regards,
Lucian

Too late, now I am already happy with this online tool. And I suspect I can improve on it too...

Can you make the 2 frames wider? I am trying to test it with some production code from our SVN and it is very hard to read

Widened the table that holds the results a bit. But remember, for the moment this tool only works best for a single line. I have not really done a good job handling newlines and carriage returns... yet.

Thanks.

Indeed, when I used the content of whole files, the script duplicates some of the text in the displayed result (quite weird). But it works fine on small input. Good job

Actually, thanks to you, I found a major problem with this script! Oh well, back to the drawing board. I'll post again if I manage to fix it.

To see an example of the problem, please post:

FIRST

SECOND