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Wednesday, January 26, 2011

ExamDiff Pro 5.5: New Ignore Lines Options

The next version of ExamDiff Pro will introduce a redesigned View | Options | Compare panel that features two new options for ignoring lines: Ignore line ranges and Ignore blank lines at the end of a file.

Suppose that I'm comparing two files that have headers. In this case, the headers consist of the first four lines of each file, and I want to ignore them because they're not relevant to my comparison:


I can ignore this range of lines by going to View | Options | Compare and entering 1-4 into the Line ranges text box under Ignore lines:


Now, after re-comparing, the headers are ignored:


As another example, suppose I'm comparing a pair of text files, and one has some extra whitespace lines at the bottom that I want to ignore:


I could use the Ignore all blank lines option, but what if I only want to ignore those blank lines that appear at the end of a file? I can do this using the new Blank lines at the end of a file checkbox under Ignore lines:


After re-comparing, all blank lines at the end of each file are ignored:

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2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

While at it why not add a 'Treat multiple blank lines as a single line' option. This way if one has -accidentally- entered an extra line, it will be ignored.

Similarly, you can add 'Treat multiple spaces as a single space', 'Ignore trailing spaces' options. Same thing for [tab] characters and end-of-line (Unix/DOS).

All these will be very useful for coders.

4:59 AM  
Blogger Larry Ingram said...

I'm not sure about "Treat multiple blank lines as a single line" option. As to your other suggestions, they already are implemented: see Options | Compare ("Ignore changes in amount of white space", "Ignore trailing spaces", and "Ignore linebreak styles").

11:38 AM  

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