Expand description
This crate is for computing patience diffs, which require more effort to compute than normal diffs but are usually more human-readable.
A diff describes the difference between two lists a
and b
; namely, the diff between a
and
b
describes how to go from a
to b
by inserting, deleting, or keeping elements.
§Why use a patience diff?
Patience diffs are often more readable than ordinary, longest common subsequence-based diffs. For example, if you go from:
int func_1() {
return 1;
}
int func_2() {
return 2;
}
To:
int func_1() {
return 1;
}
int func_new() {
return 0;
}
int func_2() {
return 2;
}
The LCS diff between these two sequences of lines is:
int func_1() {
return 1;
+ }
+
+ int func_new() {
+ return 0;
}
int func_2() {
return 2;
}
Their patience diff, on the other hand, is:
int func_1() {
return 1;
}
+ int func_new() {
+ return 0;
+ }
+
int func_2() {
return 2;
}
§How a patience diff is computed
An “ordinary” diff is based on a longest common subsequence between a
and b
. A patience
diff is very similar, but first finds the longest common subsequence between the unique
elements of a
and b
to find “unambiguous” matches. Then, a patience diff is recursively
computed for ranges between matched elements.
You can read Bram Cohen, “discoverer” of patience diff, describe patience diff in his own words here.
Enums§
Functions§
- Computes the patience diff betwen
a
andb
. TheDiffComponent
s hold references to the elements ina
andb
they correspond to.