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Re: The criss-cross merge case

From
Daniel Barkalow <barkalow@iabervon.org>
Date
Apr 28, 2005, 01:16 UTC
Message-ID
<Pine.LNX.4.21.0504272051390.30848-100000@iabervon.org>
In-Reply-To
<42703194.80409@tupshin.com>
On Wed, 27 Apr 2005, Tupshin Harper wrote:
> Can you clarify what you mean by darcs' underlying diff not being that
> great? It seems to function pretty much identically to gnu diff. In what
> way would you want the underlying diff to be improved?

GNU diff uses an algorithm which is tuned to handle finding the shortest diff among a large set of similar-length alternatives while comparing files which have a lot of repeated lines. The author of the paper it cites is really thinking about diffing DNA sequences or similar things. It also can't detect content moves, which are a common thing to have, and which will be important in the long run, when we're trying to track modifications to content which also moved from place to place.

	-Daniel
*This .sig left intentionally blank*
Previous: Tupshin HarperNext: Benedikt Schmidt
Message 4 of 9 in “The criss-cross merge case”
  1. Bram CohenApr 27, 2005
  2. Daniel BarkalowApr 27, 2005
  3. Tupshin HarperApr 28, 2005
  4. Daniel BarkalowApr 28, 2005
  5. Benedikt SchmidtApr 28, 2005
  6. Daniel BarkalowApr 28, 2005
  7. David RoundyApr 28, 2005
  8. suffix array/tree deltas (Was: The criss-cross merge case)Zed A. Shaw, Apr 28, 2005
  9. Daniel BarkalowApr 28, 2005

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