Re: ediff feature request: diffing line by line

[Karl Eichwalder <ke@gnu.franken.de>]

Alex Schroeder <alex@gnu.org> writes:

>> Ediff is designed to parse the output of diff and then present it in
>> different ways.

Concerning presentation there isn't that much to change

>> What you are proposing is a kind of "incremental diff", if I
>> understand it correctly. I think it would require a major
>> generalization of the existing code to do that.

Yes, it is kind of "incremental"; let's consider these variants:

    ->>Everyone in the world is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies
            ^^^^^^^^^^^^
    of this license document, but changing it is not allowed.
       ^^^^
    <<-

    ->>Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies
    of the license document, but changing it is not allowed.
       ~~~
    <<-

Ediff sees only 1 difference, and the user may ask for a
`ediff-switch-to-line-mode' option able to make chunks of the hunks:

    ->>Everyone in the world is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies
                ^^^^^^^^^^^^
    <<-->>of this license document, but changing it is not allowed.
             ^^^^
    <<-

    ->>Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies
    <<-->>of the license document, but changing it is not allowed.
             ~~~
    <<-

Of course, this option is useful only as long as we have to compare the
same number of similar lines.

> I'm not sure, as I understand it, all Karl is saying that we would
> like to see more commands to act upon the differences -- copy the
> replace the first word of chunk A with the first word of chunk B and
> show me a new diff output.  The diff output -- the underlying calls to
> diff and the processing of the output, and the ediff display need not
> be changed.

Yes, that's the "incremental" aspect of the proposal.  Thanks for
clarifying!

-- 
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http://www.suse.de/~ke/                                  |      ,__o
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