File and Folder comparison tools

Table of Contents

Folder comparison

diff command line tool

Using double quotes on the folder names lets us use folder names with whitespaces in them.

diff -rq "directory1/" "directory2/"

diff -r directory1/ directory2/  > differeces.txt
Flag Description
-r indicates recurse through subdirectories
-q gives brief output (i.e. don’t show the actual diffs, just note what files/dirs are different)
-s report identical files
-i ignore case in file contents
--ignore-file-name-case ignore case when comparing file names

If you want to avoid warnings (mostly usefulness warnings) about differences in the .DS_Store files, then use:

diff -r directory1/ directory2/ | grep -v .DS_Store

You can exclude subfolders directly by diff --exclude node_modules

VSCode

If you are using Visual Studio Code, you can use the Compare Folders extension on the marketplace.

https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=moshfeu.compare-folders

You open up a folder/project in Visual Studio Code, then select the two folders for compare. Right click and choose the new extension menu item.

It will bring up a new tab where it has differences in common files, a list of the files that are only in the first folder, and a list of files that are only in the second folder. It will use the built-in diff tool from Visual Studio Code.

meld - A file and folder comparison tool

  1. Works great in Linux
  2. Doesn’t seem to be available in homebrew (for macos) though

diffmerge

  1. Available in homebrew for macos https://formulae.brew.sh/cask/diffmerge#default

    But macosx wouldn’t open it because it cannot check if the software is free from malware. So it is not very helpful.

File comparison

  1. IntelliJ works best. It supports two-way moving of lines
  2. VS Code is good for viewing the differences - but not great for merging differences - it only supports one-way moving.
  3. emacs - comparing files
  4. vim - file comparison
  5. meld - A file and folder comparison tool
    1. Works great in Linux
    2. Doesn’t seem to be available in homebrew (for macos) though

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