3 Way Merge Using BC

[shailee123]

Hi ,

There is this scenario that I want to achieve using Beyond Compare:

I have 2 folders: folder 1 and folder 2. Each of these folders have 3 files i.e file1, file2, file3. I want to compare file1 of folder 1 with file 1 of folder 2 and store the output in form of some report.

Any help with this will be highly appreciated. I am struggling with this for quite a while now.

Thank you!

[Chris]

To output the names of different files from the Folder Compare:

Edit > Expand All.
Session > Folder Compare Report.

To output different lines within selected files in the Folder Compare:

Edit > Expand All.
Edit > Select All Files.
Actions > File Compare Report.

Reports can output to printer, HTML, or plain text.

[shailee123]

Can I automate this entire scenario ? Also, I want the files to be picked on it's own and the script runs comparing the selected files. Can I achieve this using Beyond Compare script ?
Please guide.

[Chris]

Yes, you can automate it using Beyond Compare's built in scripting support.

Script to automate a Folder Compare report:
load c:\folder1 c:\folder2
expand all
folder-report layout:side-by-side output-to:c:\report.txt

Script to automate a File Compare Report:
load c:\folder1 c:\folder2
expand all
select all.files
file-report layout:side-by-side options:display-mismatches output-to:c:\report.html output-options:html-color

To run a script, use the following command line:
bcompare.exe @c:\script.txt

The @ character tells Beyond Compare to run a file as a script rather than load it for interactive comparison.

Script to automate a File Compare Report of two files named as command line arguments:
file-report layout:side-by-side options:display-mismatches output-to:%3 output-options:html-color %1 %2

Command line arguments are passed as variables %1 through %9, so command line to use the above script is:
bcompare.exe @c:\script.txt c:\file1.txt c:\file2.txt c:\report.html

See the "Using Beyond Compare > Scripts" and "Scripting Reference" topics in Beyond Compare 4's help file for more information on scripting.