General

Basic general information about file comparison software.

Compare features

API / editor features

Other features

Some other features which did not fit in previous table

Aspects

What aspects can be / are compared?

Time zone effects

When files are transferred across time zones and between Microsoft FAT and NTFS file systems, the timestamp displayed by the same file may change, so that identical files with different storage histories are deemed different by a comparer that requires the timestamps to match. The difference is an exact number of quarters of an hour up to 95 (same minutes modulo 15 and seconds) if the file was transported across zones; there is also a one-hour difference within a single zone caused by the transition between standard time and daylight saving time (DST). Some, but not all, file comparison and synchronisation software can be configured to ignore the DST and time-zone differences.⁴⁹ Software known to have daylight-saving compensation is marked in the Aspects table.

See also

• File comparison
• File synchronization
• Comparison of file synchronization software
• List of disk cloning software
• Comparison of disk cloning software
• Comparison of hex editors

Notes

References

1. Scooter Software http://www.scootersoftware.com/ ↩

2. "Coode Software". Archived from the original on 2018-12-21. Retrieved 2020-12-13. https://web.archive.org/web/20181221013311/http://coodesoft.com/ ↩

3. Compare++ Operating system information http://download.cnet.com/Compare/3000-2229_4-75206501.html?tag=mncol ↩

4. Michael Kifer http://www.delorie.com/gnu/docs/emacs/ediff_toc.html ↩

5. Ediff requires a diff utility to function. As of December 2017, diff is not bundled with Emacs or Windows, so use of Ediff in a Windows environment requires installation of both Emacs and a diff implementation like GNU diff. /wiki/Diff_utility ↩

6. PrestoSoft http://www.prestosoft.com ↩

7. "Far2l". GitHub. 26 July 2022. https://github.com/elfmz/far2l ↩

8. Microsoft http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windows/xp/all/proddocs/en-us/fc.mspx ↩

9. NeXT Product Marketing (Fall 1993). "What's New in Release 3.2?". NEXTSTEP in Focus. 3 (4). NeXT Computer, Inc. Retrieved 18 July 2014. http://cdn.preterhuman.net/texts/computing/nextstep-openstep/NEXTSTEP_In_Focus/InFocusFall1993/1489_Whats_New_in_Release_3.2.rtf ↩

10. Guiffy Software https://www.guiffy.com/ ↩

11. JetBrains http://www.jetbrains.com/ ↩

12. jedit.org http://www.jedit.org ↩

13. Stephen Kennedy http://meld.sourceforge.net/ ↩

14. Meld/Windows https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Meld/Windows ↩

15. Notepad++ compare plugin https://bitbucket.org/uph0/compare ↩

16. Pretty Diff http://prettydiff.com/ ↩

17. tkdiff http://tkdiff.sourceforge.net/ ↩

18. Christian Ghisler http://www.ghisler.com/ ↩

19. Bare Bones Software, Inc. http://www.barebones.com/ ↩

20. vim license http://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/uganda.html#license ↩

21. Microsoft http://support.microsoft.com/kb/159214 ↩

22. Dean Grimm http://winmerge.org/ ↩

23. https://github.com/WinMerge/winmerge/releases/tag/v2.16.42.1 https://github.com/WinMerge/winmerge/releases/tag/v2.16.42.1 ↩

24. WinMerge in Wine https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=application&iId=1755 ↩

25. WinMerge in Wine https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=application&iId=1755 ↩

26. "KDE SDK Project Page". KDE Invent: KDE SDK. Retrieved 2023-03-09. https://invent.kde.org/sdk ↩

27. "KDiff3". KDE Applications. Retrieved 2023-03-09. https://apps.kde.org/kdiff3/ ↩

28. "The KDiff3 Handbook". docs.kde.org. Retrieved 2023-03-09. https://docs.kde.org/stable5/en/kdiff3/kdiff3/index.html ↩

29. "KDE KDiff3". Retrieved 2023-03-09. https://invent.kde.org/sdk/kdiff3 ↩

30. "KDevelop / KDevelop · GitLab (full KDevelop project)". GitLab. Retrieved 2023-03-09. https://invent.kde.org/kdevelop/kdevelop ↩

31. "Using KDiff3 as a Git Diff and Merging Tool". docs.kde.org. Retrieved 2023-03-09. https://docs.kde.org/trunk5/en/kdiff3/kdiff3/git.html ↩

32. "FreeBSD/Setup/Ports - KDE Community Wiki". community.kde.org. Retrieved 2023-03-09. https://community.kde.org/FreeBSD/Setup/Ports ↩

33. "pkgsrc.se | The NetBSD package collection". pkgsrc.se. Retrieved 2023-03-09. https://pkgsrc.se/devel/kdiff3 ↩

34. Compare logical sections (class, methods). ↩

35. Examdiff http://blog.prestosoft.com/2008/09/moved-blocks.html ↩

36. Examdiff http://www.prestosoft.com/edp_features.asp ↩

37. Visual Compare http://forum.farmanager.com/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=5193 ↩

38. Visual Compare http://forum.farmanager.com/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=5193 ↩

39. Compare logical sections (class, methods). ↩

40. "Git/Contrib/Diff-highlight at master · git/Git". GitHub. https://github.com/git/git/tree/master/contrib/diff-highlight ↩

41. gnu.org Support-for-Version-Control https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/ediff/Support-for-Version-Control.html ↩

42. through a plug-in http://www.prestosoft.com/ps.asp?page=edp_plugins#9 ↩

43. through a plug-in http://www.prestosoft.com/ps.asp?page=edp_plugins#10 ↩

44. UTF8, UTF16, MBCS, SJIS, over 150 file encoding and character set formats. ↩

45. Notepad++ FTP plugin https://sourceforge.net/projects/nppftp ↩

46. "tortoisehg / stable / wiki / FAQ —". Bitbucket.org. Archived from the original on 2010-07-15. Retrieved 2010-07-06. https://web.archive.org/web/20100715205329/http://bitbucket.org/tortoisehg/stable/wiki/FAQ#how-can-i-use-winmerge-as-my-visual-diff-tool ↩

47. "Using WinMerge with other tools – WinMerge 2.12 Manual". Winmerge.org. Archived from the original on 2010-07-10. Retrieved 2010-07-06. https://web.archive.org/web/20100710012031/http://winmerge.org/docs/manual/VersionControl.html ↩

48. "About". WinMerge. Archived from the original on 2010-07-03. Retrieved 2010-07-06. https://web.archive.org/web/20100703223053/http://winmerge.org/about/ ↩

49. Example: "Beyond Compare" help describes a user setting "timezone differences – ignores timestamp differences that are multiples of an exact hour." ↩