Unimportant Differences Ignored During Folder/File Comparison

[cstephen98]

I'm having problems getting BC3 to filter out tags that have generated values.

I've got folders with .xml files with the tags <uid>{id number}</uid> (plus others). When running a file comparison I want the tags and everything between them to be filtered out. I've tried to do this two ways using the Grammar rules with a rules-based comparison on an .xml file.

The first was to define delimiters, "<uid>" and "</uid>" (no quotes in actual definitions) but this was ignored.

I then tried using regex with the following,
<(uid|uuid)>.*?</(uid|uuid)>

However in both cases when I saved the changes, specified "ignore unimportant differences" and reran the comparisons these lines are consitantly flaged as different because the id value between the tags is different. I'm currently at a loss as how to get BC3 to apply these grammer rules. It seems to be simply ignoring whatever I put in. Any suggestions?

PS. We had these rules (along with a host of others) working fine in BC2. Is there some issue with BC3 and xml tags?

[Aaron]

Hello,

It's a bit more complicated to setup in BC3, but the current setup allows separate Importance/Unimportance, and also different formats to compare against each other.

We have a video and article here:
http://www.scootersoftware.com/suppo..._unimportantv3

Lets start with two files in the Text Compare. Once you define a grammar, you can click into the word to see which grammar is detected in the main Text Compare view, in the bottom status bar. Then, in the Text Compare's Session menu -> Session Settings, Importance tab: checked items are Important and unchecked are Unimportant. Once unchecked, it should be blue text, or if Ignore Unimportant is enabled it will be black/text.

Once this is working, we can work this up to a Folder Compare. The easiest way is to define the default session settings on the Home screen, in the saved Sessions list, Edit session defaults folder, select the Text Compare and in the Importance tab uncheck the items that need to be unimportant. Now that the default is updated, a Folder Compare running a Rules-based scan will use these settings.
*For a more advanced setup, you can also have a Folder Compare with specific child session settings.

Does this get you up and running?

[cstephen98]

Yes I figured it out a bit later after I posted (and not before of course). I was calling up the, "Session Settings" from the Folder View. When you do that you don't see the "Importance" tab. When I was reviewing the changes between two files and *then* clicked "Sessiong Settings" I was able to access the tab, *unselect* the grammer entries to now ignore and save the changes to the session default.

PS. It would be nice if that tab was available in both views and not just when called from the File Compare view.

[Aaron]

Hello,

The Session Settings dialog is context specific, and only shows the controls for the current view. If within a child session of a parent Folder Compare, the dropdown has added control to "Use only for this view" to also include "Use for these files in parent session" or "Use for all files in parent session".

To display the Importance grammars within the Folder Compare, we would need to implement a new control and scan all of the files to build a (potentially very long) grammar list, or find a better interface method. This is something we can look into, but won't be a project we will be able to tackle soon.

[marcus]

Unbelievable

Hello,

The Session Settings dialog is context specific, and only shows the controls for the current view. If within a child session of a parent Folder Compare, the dropdown has added control to "Use only for this view" to also include "Use for these files in parent session" or "Use for all files in parent session".

To display the Importance grammars within the Folder Compare, we would need to implement a new control and scan all of the files to build a (potentially very long) grammar list, or find a better interface method. This is something we can look into, but won't be a project we will be able to tackle soon.

I can't believe that the facility to apply a rule to a set of files (i.e. all those in a folder) isn't already implemented, let alone apparently such a low priority. It seems obvious that if I've created a rule, I should then wish to apply that rule to more than a pair of files. I have two folders each containing 305 files and I only want to look at the differences if they are other than a common difference for which I've added a rule but I am forced to open all 305 pairs of files, one at a time, before I can filter-out those differences that I don't care about. I chose to use this "pay-for" software, rather the freebie-software out there on the web, because it is usually good productivity aid but in this instance it has failed me.

[Chris]

If you follow the instructions in Aaron's previous post, it will apply to all files in the Folder Compare.

After you launch a Text Compare from the parent Folder Compare session, click the Rules toolbar button. Set your preferred importance settings, unchecking any grammar elements you want to ignore.

Before you close the dialog, change the dropdown from Use for this view only to Use for all files within parent session or Update session defaults. If you use Rules-based comparison in the parent Folder Compare session, it will use the importance settings you defined in the child Text Compare session for all files in the Folder Compare.