Pure binary comparison (byte by byte). All bytes
Posted: Tue Aug 07, 2007 12:39 pm
How to enable pure binary comparison?
By pure I mean: "byte by byte" comparison for ALL bytes in the files and with differences highlighted in BOTH panes.
ExamDiff Pro v 3.5.1 insists on defining "added and "deleted" sections, which simply make no sense in a binary file, when a user wants an offset 0 to be always compared with offset 0, 1 with 1, 2 with 2, 3 with 3, etc...
Identical size binary files DO NOT have "added" and "deleted" segments, because changing a byte from 0x00 to 0xAA is not an addition - it is a change!
Conversely changing a byte from 0xAA to 0x00 is not a "deletion" - it is a change!
Enabling the "View Filter", only with the options: "View Changed Segments" and "View Identical Segments", does not solve the problem because ExamDiff Pro does not display the whole file with such settings. Arrrrrrggghhh
I tried all combinations of settings with and without "view filter" - to no avail.
The best I could do is to highlight some differences only in one pane, while the second pane displays gray background with no text on it for corresponding bytes.
Of course I read your FAQ and forums, but could not find any solutions in them.
If you still do not understand what I mean by pure "byte by byte" comparison, take a look at http://www.fairdell.com/hexcmp/
The above application does pure binary comparison but it is very limited (for example it cannot tile the windows horizontally).
Regards,
George
By pure I mean: "byte by byte" comparison for ALL bytes in the files and with differences highlighted in BOTH panes.
ExamDiff Pro v 3.5.1 insists on defining "added and "deleted" sections, which simply make no sense in a binary file, when a user wants an offset 0 to be always compared with offset 0, 1 with 1, 2 with 2, 3 with 3, etc...
Identical size binary files DO NOT have "added" and "deleted" segments, because changing a byte from 0x00 to 0xAA is not an addition - it is a change!
Conversely changing a byte from 0xAA to 0x00 is not a "deletion" - it is a change!
Enabling the "View Filter", only with the options: "View Changed Segments" and "View Identical Segments", does not solve the problem because ExamDiff Pro does not display the whole file with such settings. Arrrrrrggghhh
I tried all combinations of settings with and without "view filter" - to no avail.
The best I could do is to highlight some differences only in one pane, while the second pane displays gray background with no text on it for corresponding bytes.
Of course I read your FAQ and forums, but could not find any solutions in them.
If you still do not understand what I mean by pure "byte by byte" comparison, take a look at http://www.fairdell.com/hexcmp/
The above application does pure binary comparison but it is very limited (for example it cannot tile the windows horizontally).
Regards,
George