Select all different lines

[ondrejandrej]

Is there any way to select only different lines? When I use Edit -> Select all, file is selected together with comments. I would like to select different lines only and copy them to right.
Thanks for your help.

[Michael Bulgrien]

Currently, the only way I know to "select only different lines" is to filter all equal lines, then select all. Unfortunately, the selection is not retained when you modify the filter to make the equal lines viewable again.

I have suggested to the Scooter development team on several occasions that it would be nice to have a new dropdown menu for making and interacting with advanced selection operations such as selecting all different, etc. But I don't think there are any plans to implement such functionality. The chosen product direction is to filter out what you're not interested in so that the only thing visible is the data you want to work with. This, of course, has the downside of removing the overall Context of data you're working with.

There is a "Show Context" toggle, but I don't like its implementation. It is confusing when lines remain visible when you change a filter just because you inadvertantly left the "Show Context" button enabled. I would much rather be able to select the differences with the entire file visible than to mess with filters and the "Show Context" toggle.

[Michael Bulgrien]

Note: You can also filter all the equal lines, Select All, then manually expand the filtered lines by clicking on all the "+" controls in the left margin. That will leave you with all lines visible with only the differences in the selection.

An easy implementation for the Scooter team would be to provide a menu option to expand all hidden sections programatically. That would allow one to set up a filter, select all the visible lines, then expand the filtered sections in a single action rather than multiple manual scrolls and "+" clicks. Now that would be nice.

This enhancement could also be implemented as a toggle on the toolbar to temporarily disable/ignore/override the difference filter (similar the button we have in folder compares to ignore the current file filter). Enabling the button would expand all filtered sections and retain the current selection. Disabling the toggle would reapply the difference filter resulting in the removal of the current selection. In my opinion, I would find such a toggle much more useful than the current "Show context" toggle.

[ondrejandrej]

code and comment on the same line

Thank you very much, it seems to work.

It is not very important for me to be able to view equal lines.

Do you think it is possible on the different lines to copy code only? (i. e. preserve comments on the right) I'm talking about the lines with code and comments on the same line.
Comments in my right file are in english, while comments on the left are in different language.

Also I'm interested in executing the merge operation (copying different lines with ignored comments) from the command line, since I'm going to use it quite often. Do you think it might be possible?

[Michael Bulgrien]

In the GUI, there is an "Ignore Unimportant Differences" button in the toolbar (≈) that should prevent comments from being included providing that comments are defined as unimportant for the file format being compared.

There is also an /ignoreunimportant parameter that can be passed from the command line.
See the Command Line Reference in Help for more info.

[Aaron]

Hello ondrejandrej,

I'm afraid our copy Line commands will copy the entire line. Ignoring Unimportant Differences will toggle Blue Text to Black text, which then treats it as equal for the comparison, but it will still copy when you copy the line.

Currently, you can toggle into Full Edit mode with F2, select the text you wish to copy, and copy that section manually.