Is there a tool for comparing two lines of text?
All the tools I have compare on a line level, when I really need a character level diff in the line.
Windows or *nix, GUI or command line, I don't care.
Tool for comparing a single line of text
diff()
Related Solutions
Use the comp command under cmd.exe
[C:\]comp /?
Compares the contents of two files or sets of files.
COMP [data1] [data2] [/D] [/A] [/L] [/N=number] [/C] [/OFF[LINE]]
data1 Specifies location and name(s) of first file(s) to compare.
data2 Specifies location and name(s) of second files to compare.
/D Displays differences in decimal format.
/A Displays differences in ASCII characters.
/L Displays line numbers for differences.
/N=number Compares only the first specified number of lines in each file.
/C Disregards case of ASCII letters when comparing files.
/OFF[LINE] Do not skip files with offline attribute set.
To compare sets of files, use wildcards in data1 and data2 parameters.
Looks like SourceGear DiffMerge will give you this, with its ruleset support for XML (and lots of other languages). I'm not sure if it will fix all your problems, because the example is of course a simplification of the actual program. I tried slightly more complex changes, and those seem to work fine too.
See the sample below for the diff you described
Best Answer
I use vimdiff often to compare two files side by side. vimdiff in color mode will highlight all differences between corresponding lines on each side. I'm using it to look for different characters on two different lines (in different files) right now.