It bugs me that String::Diff couldn't be coerced into giving your exact output specification right out of the box, but a dirty little substitution did the trick. And I still thought the module was cool enough to demonstrate. Here's an example of putting it to work.

use 5.012;
use String::Diff;
use Data::Dumper;

my @strings = (
    "This is the wild cat",
    "Thsi is the widl cat",
);

my $diff = String::Diff::diff_merge(
    @strings,
        remove_open => "<mismatch>\x08",
        remove_close => "\x08",
        append_open => '',
        append_close => '</mismatch>',
);
$diff =~ s/\x08.+?\x08//g;

say $diff;

__END__

Th<mismatch>si</mismatch> is the wi<mismatch>dl</mismatch> cat

[download]

If your output specification could loosen a little, it really offers some nice output options that may be even better than just the <mismatch></mismatch> tags. I like its diff_regexp() method.

Here are a couple other examples:

use 5.012;
use String::Diff;

my @strings = (
    "This is the wild cat",
    "Thsi is the widl cat",
);


say "diff_regexp  =>  ", String::Diff::diff_regexp( @strings );
say "diff_merge   =>  ", String::Diff::diff_merge( @strings );

__END__
diff_regexp  =>  Th(?:i)s(?:i)\ is\ the\ wi(?:l)d(?:l)\ cat
diff_merge   =>  Th[i]s{i} is the wi[l]d{l} cat

[download]

Dave

In reply to Re: Fastest way to find the mismatch character by davido
in thread Fastest way to find the mismatch character by basheer

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