On Tue, Jun 07, 2011 at 10:12:35PM +0000, Albretch Mueller wrote: > > ... binary diffs, though I don't know offhand the details of the algorithm. > ~ > this is the part that I need ;-) > ~ > Reading the source code without knowing the basic underlying > ideas/algorithm (just an outline if possible) won't help much You could read the comments in the source: $ head -n 7 diff-delta.c /* * diff-delta.c: generate a delta between two buffers * * This code was greatly inspired by parts of LibXDiff from Davide Libenzi * http://www.xmailserver.org/xdiff-lib.html * * Rewritten for GIT by Nicolas Pitre <nico@xxxxxxxxxxx>, (C) 2005-2007 According to the xdiff page linked: For binary files, LibXDiff implements both (with some modification) the algorithm described in File System Support for Delta Compression by Joshua P. MacDonald, and the algorithm described in Fingerprinting By Random Polynomials by Michael O. Rabin. Nicolas (cc'd) might be able to say what, if any, substantive changes were made from those works. -Peff -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe git" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html