Difftastic

Determining file differences can be useful from multiple angles, be it that you’re dead set to find duplicates, keeping a structured media collection, or, simply wanting to examine different files for determining bugs, errors, and related aspects. There are multiple apps that address the issue, some more complex, others simple, but most follow a quite standard working principle.

Difftastic is a command-line-based application that was developed precisely in order to offer users the means to perform file comparisons, in order to detect and highlight differences, based on analyzing their corresponding syntax.

The application can be initialized and used with a wide range of programming languages, and when files with unrecognizable extensions are used, it will perform a textual difference process, with word highlighting. A series of syntax and structure elements are supported, such as nesting, alignment, line wrapping, and more.

The main working principle behind the application involves language detection, followed by code parsing, which is then later on followed by the actual syntax tree comparison. In accordance with the detected file extension, Difftastic will decide the required parser and perform two recursive walk-throughs on two directories, and diff the files with similar names, enabling users the choice of skipping unchanged files.