Text Comparison of whole session

[koppts]

Hi there,

I have to satisfy the need of comparing the content of 2 folders. But the output should not be the differences between the folders but the differences between the files.
Each folder contains the same files but with changes so that ..\folderA\ex.txt != ..\folderB\ex.txt

What I need is basically a report over all files with highlighted differences.
What I could get until here was a folder comparison but no chance to differentiate the single items between the folders.

And at last I need a single or multiple output files which contain the "all" option of a comparison with bc3.

I´m quite sure this is or at least should be possible to to.

What I don´t want is to call a shell script which would be indeed the solution which came to my mind at first. But at the moment I can´t spend the time to do this.

So any ideas on this topic? Please tell me =)

Thanks in advance

Greetings
Thomas

[Aaron]

Hello,

From the Folder Compare session, go to the Session menu -> Session Settings, Comparison tab. Leave the defaults enabled (Timestamp, Size, Override) and also enable Rules-based content comparison.

This scan might take a little while, but will return if the text within the files is equal or different.

Then set the Display Filter to show Only Differences (or Only Differences No Orphans if you do not want to report the entire text of an orphan file).

Then use the Edit menu -> Expand All, Edit menu -> Select All Files. Both these commands are also on the toolbar. This will leave you with a selection of the different files you wish to report on.

Go to the Actions menu -> File Compare Report. You can now generate a file level report showing the text inside the files, and set this report to show only the different text, layout side by side, etc. If this option does not appear, that means there is an invalid selection, such as an archive file. You'll need to filter those out or deselect them.

How does this work for you?

[koppts]

Hey Aaron,

I´m glad you can help me out of this =)
Due to the fact that I have to compare only code-files it´s amazing to have such an option.
But to be honest it´s a little bit tricky to get there. Want I want to say with this is that your software is really nice to handle great files or a great amount of files but time you need to find the right options and such tricks are the reason your software is not as great as it could be.
If you could improve your usability level it would be propably the best tool for comparing anything

[koppts]

Two questions just came up after some tests with this nice feature.

Is there a possibility to exclude same files from this content check?
What I need is output option "All" but no similar files where the diff is empty.

The second one is - is there a possibility to print the output directly to pdf ?
I know that you could use a pdf printer but maybe you want a custom html design provided by your own xsl file but you don´t want to give this file away so you need a pdf or other non-convertible file format which has some open-source viewer - dvi e.g.

I would appreciate an answer in the near future - thanks for your afford you put in this nice tool =)

Greetings

[Chris]

Is there a possibility to exclude same files from this content check?
What I need is output option "All" but no similar files where the diff is empty.

The report includes all selected files. If you set your filter to "View > Show Differences", then "Edit > Select All Files", it will not include same files in the report.

The second one is - is there a possibility to print the output directly to pdf ?

Beyond Compare cannot output directly to PDF. It supports output to printer, HTML, and plain text. If you want PDF output, you'll need to use printed output, then print to a PDF printer. If you don't have a PDF printer installed, I've had good luck with the free PrimoPDF.