Line or Word Diffs

The difference algorithm in this library operates in character mode. This produces the most detailed diff possible. However, for some applications one may wish to take a coarser approach.

Note that the following applies to all language ports except Lua. Lua currently has no capability to handle Unicode. The examples below are in JavaScript, but the procedure is identical in other languages.

Line Mode

Computing a line-mode diff is really easy.

function diff_lineMode(text1, text2) {
  var dmp = new diff_match_patch();
  var a = dmp.diff_linesToChars_(text1, text2);
  var lineText1 = a.chars1;
  var lineText2 = a.chars2;
  var lineArray = a.lineArray;
  var diffs = dmp.diff_main(lineText1, lineText2, false);
  dmp.diff_charsToLines_(diffs, lineArray);
  return diffs;
}

What's happening here is that the texts are rebuilt by the diff_linesToChars function so that each line is represented by a single Unicode character. Then these Unicode characters are diffed. Finally the diff is rebuilt by the diff_charsToLines function to replace the Unicode characters with the original lines.

Adding dmp.diff_cleanupSemantic(diffs); before returning the diffs is probably a good idea so that the diff is more human-readable.

Word Mode

Computing a word-mode diff is exactly the same as the line-mode diff, except you will have to make a copy of diff_linesToChars and call it diff_linesToWords. Look for the line that identifies the next line boundary:

lineEnd = text.indexOf('\n', lineStart);

Change this line to look for any runs of whitespace, not just end of lines.

Despite the name, the diff_charsToLines function will continue to work fine in word-mode.