MissPerl:

While awaiting responses on my question, I whipped this up. You could use it as a base to work from:

$ cat ~/bin/diffident_html.pl
#!env perl
#
# diffident_html.pl <FName> <FName>
#
# Build a dumb HTML table showing the diff (via Algorithm::Diff) of tw
+o files
#
use strict;
use warnings;
use Algorithm::Diff;

my $LFName = shift // die "Expected two file names!";
my @lfile = readfile($LFName);
my $RFName = shift // die "Expected *TWO* file names!";
my @rfile = readfile($RFName);

my $diff = Algorithm::Diff->new( \@lfile, \@rfile );
$diff->Base(1);
print qq{<html><body><table border="1">\n};
print qq{<tr><th colspan="2" align="left" bgcolor="#c0c0c0">$LFName</t
+h>}
      .   qq{<th colspan="2" align="left" bgcolor="#c0c0c0">$RFName</t
+h></tr>\n};
print qq{<tr><th width="1%" align="right" bgcolor="#c0c0c0">#</th>}
      .   qq{<th width="49%" align="left" bgcolor="#c0c0c0">Source</th
+>}
      .   qq{<th width="1%" align="right" bgcolor="#c0c0c0">#</th>}
      .   qq{<th width="49%" align="left" bgcolor="#c0c0c0">Source</th
+></tr>\n};
while ($diff->Next()) {

    if ($diff->Same()) {
        # Left and Right file have a block of identical lines
        print qq{<tr><td colspan="4" align="center">.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nb
+sp;. }
        .     qq{ block of matching lines .&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.</td><
+/tr>\n};
        next;
    }

    my ($min1, $min2) = $diff->Get(qw( Min1 Min2 ));
    my @L = $diff->Items(1);
    my @R = $diff->Items(2);

    while (@L or @R) {
        print qq{<tr>};
        if (@L) {
            print qq{<td align="right">$min1</td><td align="left">$L[0
+]</td>};
            ++$min1;
            shift @L;
        }
        else {
            print qq{<td colspan="2" bgcolor="#c0c0c0">};
        }
        if (@R) {
            print qq{<td align="right">$min2</td><td align="left">$R[0
+]</td>};
            ++$min2;
            shift @R;
        }
        else {
            print qq{<td colspan="2" bgcolor="#c0c0c0">};
        }
        print qq{</tr>\n};
    }
}
print qq{</table></body></html>\n};

sub readfile {
    my $fname = shift;
    open my $FH, '<', $fname or die "Can't open file $fname: $!\n";
    return <$FH>;
}

[download]

I simply took an Anonymous Monk's suggestion to use Algorithm::Diff to get the differences between two files, and from that glued the data together into an HTML table. If you wanted to *really* use it, you'd probably want to use a template handling package, work through the error cases, etc.

...roboticus

When your only tool is a hammer, all problems look like your thumb.

In reply to Re: diff vs diff -y by roboticus
in thread diff vs diff -y by MissPerl

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