On Apr 4, 2007, at 09:34, Rogan Dawes wrote:
For binary files, it would be consistent to show the number of
bytes added/deleted. I have not investigated the output format for
the libxdiff binary patch format, but hopefully it would not be too
difficult to calculate the deletions and additions.
For binary files it is impractical to do insert/delete type of
differences.
For text files, treating lines as indivisible entities to insert/delete
make some sense. For binary files, you'd have to use some arbitrary
context-defined breakpoints and then go from there. The result would
be some very complicated and unclear algorithm that would have no use
in the real world.
Many binary files, such as an images, waveforms or virtually any
compressed
stream, can change in a way that changes all bytes in the file, while
the changes in the displayed image or the uncompressed stream are
imperceptible or absent. Guessing semantic differences between binary
blobs is hopeless and subjective, while differences in size are fact.
-Geert
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