462 Data Compare - ignoring text

[chrisjj]

How to I set the current Data Compare session to ignore a text string e.g. [...]? Thanks.

[Chris]

Chris,

It isn't possible to ignore a text string in the Data Viewer. The Data Viewer can only ignore character case and whitespace differences in text columns. You can also mark an entire column as unimportant.

[chrisjj]

OK, thanks. :(

[jbrannic]

I changed the column of the field I want to ignore to a boolean column. This will convert all values to display TRUE (unless the value in the text was a 0) This will then treat the fields as matching.

The downside of course is you can't see the text. All you see is "True"

In my case I have a Column that is the LineNbr. If the files are different by one row, then every row in the file will be marked as different because the linenbr is diff. So in my case I don't care that I can't see the value. Don't know about your scenario.

I agree this is a feature that needs to be added !

[Michael Bulgrien]

I agree this is a feature that needs to be added !

Just curious... why isn't marking the entire column as unimportant as Chris described sufficient for the scenarios you've described? What makes this a "feature that needs to be added"?

Edit: Just for the record, I can see the usefulness of having text Replacements in a data compare session, just not in the context of ignoring a column.

Another useful feature would be to allow a user to spawn a text compare session in a new tab from the data compare and specify the delimiter to use in the text compare session. In other words, I don't mean just re-opening the existing files in a text compare, but rather exporting the existing files to new temporary text files using the user-specified delimiter then opening the exported files in a new text compare session.

[jbrannic]

This is really my first day using the product so I have a lot to learn about how to use it but...

When I was looking for this feature my first thought was to mark the column as unimportant too ..but it still is marked as a difference (just diff color) and highlights the row which was not my desired result. I wanted any difference in that column to be ignored.

[Craig]

Use the View menu's "Ignore Unimportant Differences" command to ignore those. They'll all turn black, will filter as matches, etc.

[Michael Bulgrien]

Use the View menu's "Ignore Unimportant Differences" command to ignore those. They'll all turn black, will filter as matches, etc.

Or use the Ignore Differences toggle on the toolbar (≈).