Diffuse Compares Both Text And Code, With Option To Merge Into One File
Comparing text files becomes indispensable in many instances, where system administrators find it confounding to compare multiple huge log files manually, application developers also need an efficient text comparison tool which offers a detailed insight into the line differences in application’s module code files. For placid users who don’t care much about advance features, we have already covered two simple file comparison tools – diffChecker and CompareMyFiles. If you’re looking for an advanced utility for carrying out complex text comparisons, try out Diffuse, an opensource application which brings a great number of features to compare multiple text files with an option to merge changes on the fly.
The multi-tabbed interface allows you to thoroughly review changes in specified files, unlike other traditional text file comparison tools, it offers 3-way file comparison, letting user compare 3 files simultaneously. All the compare and merge-specific options are lying on the toolbar. First off, select the comparison mode (2-way/3-way) and specify number of files according to selected mode.
Each file which is being compared has specific color which helps user in visually analyzing the differences/changes. At extreme right-side, you will see small pane which shows all the differences in the files, the white color symbolizes identical part of the text file whereas color in pane shows differences in the files.
The toolbar contain buttons to navigate through all the changes along with an option to merge changes. Before making any change, we’d reckon you to read the screentip to better understand the option. From Format menu, you can further take control over text files, you can change the letter case, sort in ascending/descending order, remove white spaces, covert space to tabs and vice versa, and so on.
Changes can be saved from File menu, just select a file after making suitable alterations and click Save. It supports innumerable text encodings, you will probably find all the text encoders to encode the document in required format.
We found some interface-specific glitches, hopefully it will get fixed in forthcoming releases. As far as primary functionality goes, the application works as intended. Testing was done on Windows 7 x86 system while it supports multiple OS platforms including, Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, and BSD.
