OT: Folder comparison software

suzyb

Does anyone know of the above that does multiple folders. So I could select say 5 folders and see which files are different, which are missing etc.

There are plenty of apps that will compare 2 folders but I need to compare a dozen.

kelsen

Why are you even comparing?

Bromptons every time!

davis

kelsen wrote:

Why are you even comparing?

Bromptons every time!

I think you win the internet :-)

Although, back on the off-topic...
suzyb, I think you'll be lucky, it's the word "differences" that's going to trip you up, because it's differences between things - i.e. two of them. To get a full account you'd need to compare (diff) each pair, and I think there are 78 pairs in a set of 12 - please check, maths fans!

I'd say your highest chance of success is to produce a text listing of each directory, then diff each pair of text listings....

But there I go, being the most(*) interesting bloke in the room again.

*: Fear my abuse of the word "most"! I think I'm still bored...

Edit: Obviously, this is far simpler if you've got one directory/source/thingy you're willing to call the "master", then you've only got n-1 comparisons/diffs to make

davmaggs

If you just want a list of folder contents and details for each file (like size, date etc) then Karen print is nice.

Just tick some boxes and click the button

http://www.karenware.com/powertools/ptdirprn.asp

CiB

Do a directory lsiting of each into a txt file, import each file into its own table in Access then create & run an Unmatched Query against those tables. That should show you what's missing, assuming you have at least one folder that contains the full set.

suzyb

The problem is that I have 11 (soon to be 12) copies of a website, all of which are basically the same bar a few bits of functionality. And I've completely lost track of which sites include which functionality and what version of the functionality that is.

And I was hoping there would be some little app that could compare a bunch of the folders at the same time to help me identify what is what.

CiB

You could probably throw one together in an hour in C# - you just need to create a listing of each folder & sub-folders [nice bit of recursion there] that shows the relevant file attributes - size, last update probably, and then lists them out in a CSV that you can peer at side by side in Excel.. That should do it.

Bit late but this is where the devils own spawn known as Visual Source Safe might come into its own, as long as you keep backups where it can't do any damage to the files.

davis

suzyb wrote:

The problem is that I have 11 (soon to be 12) copies of a website, all of which are basically the same bar a few bits of functionality. And I've completely lost track of which sites include which functionality and what version of the functionality that is.

Hmm. You need some Source Code Control software, and a time machine.

suzyb

CiB wrote:

Bit late but this is where the devils own spawn known as Visual Source Safe might come into its own, as long as you keep backups where it can't do any damage to the files.

Using source control would require my boss and to a lesser extent his underling to not be stuck in their own ways idiots.

gtvlusso

Real men 'grep' for it and men's men would 'egrap' for it.

I guess you could use a bit of awk to do some file analysis for you.....

for i in `ls -lrt | awk '{print$9}'`;do echo $i;jrep -m -p -j ./$i >> <filename> | sort -q;done

You think I am talking cack, don't you :-(

CiB

An easier way might be to eyeball each set. Assuming you know what changes you've made, you'll know which files to expect to find them in and can rename the parent dir accordingly. Prob quicker than trying to automate it. Obviously depends on the size of the project though, if you plan to do that x 12.

Good luck. I'm off now.

kelsen

davis wrote:

suzyb wrote:

The problem is that I have 11 (soon to be 12) copies of a website, all of which are basically the same bar a few bits of functionality. And I've completely lost track of which sites include which functionality and what version of the functionality that is.

Hmm. You need some Source Code Control software, and a time machine.

You need to fob this work off to someone lower down in the pecking order than you

Agent57

Suggesting someone use Visual Source Safe makes baby Jesus cry. Try git, Bazaar, Mercurial -- or at a push, Subversion; though Subversion offers nothing to warrant its use over one of the previous 3 suggestions, IMO.

It's never too late to start using a version control system!

kelsen

gtvlusso wrote:

Real men 'grep' for it and men's men would 'egrap' for it.

I guess you could use a bit of awk to do some file analysis for you.....

for i in `ls -lrt | awk '{print$9}'`;do echo $i;jrep -m -p -j ./$i >> <filename> | sort -q;done

You think I am talking cack, don't you :-(

I don't. You made me all misty-eyed with memories of simpler times...

davis

kelsen wrote:

gtvlusso wrote:

Real men 'grep' for it and men's men would 'egrap' for it.

I guess you could use a bit of awk to do some file analysis for you.....

for i in `ls -lrt | awk '{print$9}'`;do echo $i;jrep -m -p -j ./$i >> <filename> | sort -q;done

You think I am talking cack, don't you :-(

I don't. You made me all misty-eyed with memories of simpler times...

Me too. Minus 5 points for backticks and what looks to be a useless use of long ls on a forum though :-) And what's "jrep" -- misspelling of grep with a few unrecognisable (to me) options tagged on the end?

gtvlusso

davis wrote:

kelsen wrote:

gtvlusso wrote:

Real men 'grep' for it and men's men would 'egrap' for it.

I guess you could use a bit of awk to do some file analysis for you.....

for i in `ls -lrt | awk '{print$9}'`;do echo $i;jrep -m -p -j ./$i >> <filename> | sort -q;done

You think I am talking cack, don't you :-(

I don't. You made me all misty-eyed with memories of simpler times...

Me too. Minus 5 points for backticks and what looks to be a useless use of long ls on a forum though :-) And what's "jrep" -- misspelling of grep with a few unrecognisable (to me) options tagged on the end?

Actually, that awk won't do what the lady requires....And I cannot be arsed to write something that no one will use, I cut and paste that from my terminal I was just using.....damn you Microsoft!

suzyb

Agent57 wrote:

Suggesting someone use Visual Source Safe makes baby Jesus cry. Try git, Bazaar, Mercurial -- or at a push, Subversion; though Subversion offers nothing to warrant its use over one of the previous 3 suggestions, IMO.

It's never too late to start using a version control system!

I thought subversion was seen as one of the best.

Agent57

suzyb wrote:

I thought subversion was seen as one of the best.

In terms of centralised version control systems, maybe; and if you're a small team, working in a single location, it's perfectly adequate I think. It has many fans, and I used to be one of them.

But Git, Bazaar and Mercurial all belong to a different breed of VCS; the distributed VCS. In that model, rather than having one single repository that you check code into and out of, every developer essentially has their own repo on their local machine. So you can commit changes, revert changes and do all that other great version control stuff even if you're not connected to the network (e.g. you're at home, or on the train, or in the air). Then, once you connect to the network again (corporate, Internet, whatever) you can push your changes to another repo (or ask someone else to pull changes from yours). It's a slightly different way of working, but many people who try a DVCS would be very reluctant to go back to something like cvs or svn.

Personally, I've moved to Git, and I love it.

If you're interested, here's a video of a talk given by Git's creator, Linus Torvalds, at Google:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XpnKHJAok8

davmaggs

serious Karen will just give you a list, no need to learn a whole load of stuff, code things or program something. Just tick the boxes no the folders that you want.

It's free

suzyb

Agent57 wrote:

suzyb wrote:

I thought subversion was seen as one of the best.

In terms of centralised version control systems, maybe; and if you're a small team, working in a single location, it's perfectly adequate I think. It has many fans, and I used to be one of them.

But Git, Bazaar and Mercurial all belong to a different breed of VCS; the distributed VCS. In that model, rather than having one single repository that you check code into and out of, every developer essentially has their own repo on their local machine. So you can commit changes, revert changes and do all that other great version control stuff even if you're not connected to the network (e.g. you're at home, or on the train, or in the air). Then, once you connect to the network again (corporate, Internet, whatever) you can push your changes to another repo (or ask someone else to pull changes from yours). It's a slightly different way of working, but many people who try a DVCS would be very reluctant to go back to something like cvs or svn.

Personally, I've moved to Git, and I love it.

If you're interested, here's a video of a talk given by Git's creator, Linus Torvalds, at Google:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XpnKHJAok8

That sounds most handy and perfect for the way we work.

Of course just because something could help us work better doesn't mean we'll get to use it.

(can you tell I'm feeling disillusioned today)

Mr_Cellophane

Beyond Compare is very good for comparing 2 folders. Never tried to see if the latest version will compare more

http://www.scootersoftware.com/

EKE_38BPM

Try this site.

CiB

EKE_38BPM wrote:

Try this site.

Is Wikipedia still down for you then? <wanders of chortling at good joke though>

EKE_38BPM

CiB wrote:

EKE_38BPM wrote:

Try this site.

Is Wikipedia still down for you then? <wanders of chortling at good joke though>

Yeah, I can't be bothered to go and turn everything off so I still have a slow connection and no Wiki.

mkirby

never mind sed and awk Perl is the way to go.

Sorry Suzy completely useless i know

craker

All coders use this sort of software daily..

Windiff is a basic Microsoft comparison prog.
http://www.grigsoft.com/download-windiff.htm

I also use Visual Comparer http://www.nikeware.com/

and WinMerge http://winmerge.org/ which is open source and better than Windiff

all of these do textual comparison throughout whatever range of folders and subfolders you want. You'll struggle to make sense of files that are stored in a binary format (eg Word docs).

bornagainroadie

+1 for BeyondCompare

Use it daily and have not found anything to better it on Windoze platforms. Not tried the latest V3.0 myself, hope they haven't "improved" it too much.