🚀 Advanced Diff Tool

A beautiful, feature-rich file comparison tool with syntax highlighting and multiple viewing modes

Features • Installation • Usage • Examples • Documentation

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✨ Features

🎨 Multiple View Modes Unified - Traditional diff format Side-by-Side - Horizontal comparison Inline - Compact single column Statistics - Detailed metrics 🔍 Smart Analysis Auto language detection (20+ languages) Word-level diff highlighting Similarity percentage Change distribution charts

🛡️ Robust Processing Multi-encoding support Whitespace ignore option Case-insensitive comparison Configurable context lines 📊 Rich Information Line numbers display File size comparison Addition/deletion/modification counts Visual progress indicators

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🎬 Demo

📈 Statistics View

python diff_plus.py old_file.php new_file.php --stats

╭──────────────────────────────────────────────────────╮
│ Diff Statistics: old_file.php ↔ new_file.php        │
╰──────────────────────────────────────────────────────╯
╭─────────────────── Statistics ───────────────────────╮
│ 📄 File A Lines      │ 70                            │
│ 📄 File B Lines      │ 143                           │
│ ➕ Additions         │ 31                            │
│ ➖ Deletions         │ 1                             │
│ 🔄 Modifications     │ 74                            │
│ 📊 Total Changes     │ 106                           │
│ ✨ Similarity        │ 41.3%                         │
│ 💾 File A Size       │ 1.6KB                         │
│ 💾 File B Size       │ 4.1KB                         │
╰──────────────────────────────────────────────────────╯

Change Distribution:
+ ██████████████ 31
-  1
~ ██████████████████████████████████ 74

🎨 Side-by-Side View

Perfect for reviewing code changes with syntax highlighting:

python diff_plus.py old.py new.py -s -n -l python

📝 Unified View

Classic diff format with beautiful colors:

python diff_plus.py config_v1.json config_v2.json

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📦 Installation

Prerequisites

• Python 3.7 or higher
• pip package manager

Install Dependencies

pip install rich

Download

# Clone or download diff_plus.py
git clone https://github.com/LvL23HT/diff_plus.git
cd diff_plus
chmod +x diff_plus.py

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🚀 Quick Start

Basic Usage

# Simple comparison
python diff_plus.py file1.txt file2.txt

# Side-by-side view
python diff_plus.py file1.py file2.py -s

# Show statistics
python diff_plus.py old.js new.js --stats

With Line Numbers

python diff_plus.py old_code.php new_code.php -s -n

Ignore Whitespace

python diff_plus.py config1.yaml config2.yaml -w

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💡 Usage Examples

🔧 Development Workflow

Compare Git Changes

# Compare current file with last commit
git show HEAD:src/app.py > /tmp/old_app.py
python diff_plus.py /tmp/old_app.py src/app.py -s -n

Review Pull Request

# Side-by-side with word-level diff
python diff_plus.py feature-old.js feature-new.js -s --word-diff

Code Refactoring

# See what changed after refactoring
python diff_plus.py before_refactor.py after_refactor.py --stats

📄 Configuration Management

Compare Config Files

# Ignore whitespace differences
python diff_plus.py production.conf staging.conf -w

Environment Comparison

# Compare .env files (ignore case)
python diff_plus.py .env.development .env.production --ignore-case

📚 Documentation Review

Track Documentation Changes

# Inline view for markdown files
python diff_plus.py README_v1.md README_v2.md -i -n

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🎯 All Command Line Options

positional arguments:
  a                     First file to compare
  b                     Second file to compare

View Modes (mutually exclusive):
  -s, --side           Side-by-side view
  -i, --inline         Inline/compact view
  --stats              Show statistics only

Syntax Highlighting:
  -l LANG, --lang LANG Language (auto-detected if not specified)
                       Supported: python, php, javascript, java,
                       cpp, go, rust, html, css, sql, json, etc.

Display Options:
  -n, --line-numbers   Show line numbers
  -c N, --context N    Number of context lines (default: 3)

Processing Options:
  -w, --ignore-whitespace    Ignore whitespace differences
  --ignore-case              Ignore case differences
  --word-diff                Word-level diff (side-by-side only)

Output Options:
  --no-color           Disable colored output
  -q, --quiet          Quiet mode (exit code only)
  -h, --help           Show help message

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🌈 Supported Languages

Category	Languages
Web	HTML, CSS, SCSS, JavaScript, TypeScript, PHP
Systems	C, C++, Rust, Go
Application	Python, Java, C#, Ruby, Swift, Kotlin
Data	JSON, YAML, XML, SQL
Shell	Bash, Shell Script
Docs	Markdown

Auto-detection works based on file extension

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📊 Exit Codes

Code	Meaning
0	Files are identical
1	Files differ
2	Error reading files

Script Integration Example

#!/bin/bash
if python diff_plus.py file1.txt file2.txt -q; then
    echo "✓ Files match - deploying..."
    ./deploy.sh
else
    echo "✗ Files differ - review needed"
    exit 1
fi

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🎓 Advanced Examples

1. Full-Featured Comparison

python diff_plus.py src/old_api.py src/new_api.py \
  -s \              # Side-by-side view
  -n \              # Show line numbers
  -l python \       # Force Python syntax
  --word-diff       # Highlight word changes

2. Minimal Context for Large Files

python diff_plus.py large_log_1.txt large_log_2.txt -c 0
# Shows only changed lines, no context

3. Case-Insensitive Configuration Check

python diff_plus.py Config.ini config.ini --ignore-case -w
# Ignores case and whitespace

4. Statistics Pipeline

# Get similarity score for automation
python diff_plus.py old.js new.js --stats | grep Similarity

5. Batch Comparison

# Compare multiple file pairs
for file in *.php; do
    if [ -f "backup/$file" ]; then
        echo "Checking $file..."
        python diff_plus.py "backup/$file" "$file" -q || echo "  ↳ Changed"
    fi
done

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🔬 Technical Details

Architecture

• Parser: Python difflib.SequenceMatcher
• Rendering: Rich library for terminal output
• Encoding: Multi-fallback (UTF-8, Latin-1, CP1252, ISO-8859-1)

Performance

• Memory: Line-by-line streaming
• Speed: Optimized for files up to 10MB
• Complexity: O(n*m) where n,m are file line counts

Color Scheme

• 🟢 Green - Additions
• 🔴 Red - Deletions
• 🟡 Yellow - Modifications
• 🔵 Cyan - Headers/Metadata
• ⚪ Dim - Line numbers

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🤝 Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Here are some ideas:

• Add directory comparison mode
• Export to HTML/PDF
• Git integration
• Custom color themes
• Search within diff
• Bookmark changes

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📝 License

MIT License - feel free to use in your projects!

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🙏 Acknowledgments

• Built with Rich - Amazing terminal formatting
• Inspired by classic diff, git diff, and modern diff tools

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📬 Support

Found a bug? Have a feature request?

• Open an issue
• Submit a pull request
• Share your use case!

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Made with ❤️ for developers who love beautiful diffs

⭐ Star this repo if you find it useful!

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