Data compare - Ignore a specific column based on column name multiple files

[BalajiBelur]

Hi Admin,

I have a requirement to compare multiple data files .csv which have data from multiple tables against baseline files taken previously.
I read blogs,videos and knowledge base on your website and understood how to ignore a column in Beyond compare.
Currently using beyond compare 3.3.12 on windows.

File 1 - from table GG has a 3rd column called "RecordNumber"
- i was able to ignore differences for this column using beyond compare settings as "unimportant" . This was successful

File 2 has from table KK has 5th column called "RecordNumber"
Now, if i configure again - data in 5th column will be come "unimportant" along with 3rd column data.
In this case i want to ignore only 5th column while comparing table KK contents.

Please let me know how to achieve this. as i have many files each file may have "RecordNumber" column in different order, i want an ability irrespective of column order this specific column data - differences should be ignored.
Is this possible in beyond compare? I am using command line interface using scripting ability.

Thanks in Advance.

[Aaron]

Hello,

Beyond Compare 4 does not currently support scanning the Header title for alignment or importance. The Session Settings can manually move and align different headers and a specific column can then be unimportant, but these are manual configurations (which can be saved for future use) and not a scan that can be automatically determined.

Between file 1 and file 2, you can update the session settings to align those columns, then make it unimportant. To access this in scripting, you would need to save this as part of a folder comparison, since script can only load saved folder compare sessions. To do so: launch a Folder Compare, double click on your pair of files to launch the child session, edit the child's Session Settings and in that dialog switch from "use only for this view" to "use for these files in the parent session". Close the child session and re-save the parent folder compare.

An unsupported tactic is to use a Portable Install of BC4, which contains the BCSessions.xml within the install directory, and you could update the default Table Compare session settings (column positions, importance) before executing the script. The script would then use these defaults for any table reports. This editing of the xml would need to be done with an external script and assumes familiarity with editing xml values. To figure out which values you need, I would suggest saving the default BCSessions.xml, then launch the program and make the changes in the graphical interface and save the session, then use BC4's Text Compare to compare the two versions of BCSessions.xml.