automatic comparison of 2 files

cdailey · Post by **cdailey** » 2010 Oct 07, 05:16

I have (yet another) convenience request. Please add a new status bar item that shows whether 2 selected files are identical or not. My apologies if there’s already a thread for this, as searching for “compare” returned too many threads.

Often attachments are emailed and re-emailed by my co-workers and I need to determine if an attachment is a duplicate or has been modified. I set up a user command to launch WinMerge after selecting 2 files to see if these are the same or, if not and these are text files, how these differ, but I would prefer to just select 2 files then look at the status bar to see if these are duplicates (without having to launch WinMerge or otherwise compare the files) then decide whether to further compare.

I’m thinking the new status bar box could show 1 of 4 graphical indications:
1) Blank/empty box when anything besides 2 files are selected
2) 2 file graphics (rectangular pieces of dog-eared paper with horizontal lines for the writing) with a question mark in between while the comparison is occurring
3) 2 file graphics with an equal sign in between if these are identical
4) 2 file graphics with a not equal sign in between if these aren’t identical

I would compare in 2 steps. When 2 files are selected, check the file sizes. If different, show the “not equal” graphic else show the “question mark” graphic and begin comparing byte by byte until a difference is found or the end of the files is reached and no differences were found.

The comparison should probably be a low priority task so that comparing 2 big files doesn't slow things down too much.

Thanks for your consideration!

Post by **nikos** » 2010 Oct 07, 07:18

you can do this yourself, sort of. There is a checksum column which is indicative of the content of any file, so if two have the same checksum they are likely identical. You can put the checksum column either in detailed view mode or enable the infobars (view > toolbars menu) and add it there

as an additional convenience use <ctrl+M> to turn on mirror browsing/scrolling

cdailey · Post by **cdailey** » 2010 Oct 08, 18:16

OK - thanks. I'd forgotten about checksums. Looking at those is quicker than launching WinMerge.

atomdrift · Post by **atomdrift** » 2010 Oct 14, 16:46

I hadn't used the Infobars before. Very cool.

profess · Post by **profess** » 2010 Oct 14, 19:26

whilst we're on the subject...

Sometimes checksums are not available, there is no entry and/or the value is 00000000.

How comes? Thanks.

Osei

Post by **nikos** » 2010 Oct 15, 04:00

there is a size limit for checksum extraction, see Tools > Options > General

profess · Post by **profess** » 2010 Oct 15, 12:38

Ok. Thanks for clearing that up.

Osei