Quick Contents Compare Option?

Discuss new features and functions
Posts: 26
Joined: 8 Sep 2010

fractals

Would it be possible to add a Quick Contents Compare option that only compares the beginning of a file, with a user-specified Quick Compare Limit? WinMerge 2.14.0.0 has this feature. This could flag different files that a date/time and size comparison would miss (and a full comparison takes too long in most cases).
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Posts: 7054
Joined: 9 Dec 2007

Zenju

It's possible to exlude files by size via filter. FreeFileSync respects this setting during a binary comparison.
Posts: 26
Joined: 8 Sep 2010

fractals

It's possible to exlude files by size via filter. FreeFileSync respects this setting during a binary comparison.Zenju
Thanks for your reply. However, this existing functionality would skip a "large" file completely rather than comparing just the first part of the file's contents.
Posts: 23
Joined: 23 Feb 2009

micha--

I like the option of comparing only parts of file content. Therefore i suggest:

Please implement in "compare settings (F6)" a 3. Button and 3 Textfields:

[Date and Time]
[File content]
[Parts of content]
"n" times of
"percent" % of size
and min. "minsize" MiB

If [Parts of content] is not selected ==> the 3 Textfields "n", "percent", "minsize" are disabled.
If [Parts of content] is selected ==> the 3 Textfields are enabled and can have:
"n" <-- integer 1..9
"percent" <-- integer 0..100
"minsize" <-- real 0..?

E.g.: "n" = 3, "percent" = 0, "minsize" = 0.5 ==> 3 parts (at file begin, file midle, and file end) of 512 KiB are compared. If Date and Time and the 3 Parts are equal FFS marked the 2 compared files as equal.

E.g.: "n" = 1, "percent" = 30, "minsize" = 100 ==> 1 part (at file midle) of 30% of file size but minimal 100 MiB is compared.

FFS compares first Date and Time, and therefore [Parts of content] is an extension of [Date and Time], but quicker (and less accurate) than [File content].
Posts: 3
Joined: 2 Nov 2011

teleksterling

I'd find this option useful on occasion, too.
Personally, if only one section of the file was to be compared, I'd most often want the start compared (with headers and such likely to be there) - but know that this will vary from user to user.
So, perhaps rather than the 'n' times option suggested by micha, have three checkboxes for start/middle/end?