Show number of differences between files when in folder view

[Chris]

Sorry, it's still on the feature request list. With a very small development team and a very large feature request list we can't always implement things as quickly as we'd like.

[jesseelliott]

Hi, I just wanted to check on this feature again. Any hope for this one?

I think we first asked about it via email *17* years ago

[renato_ch]

Still needing this. Is it a feature yet? Or are there any extensions that provide this?

[Aaron]

Hello,

Thanks for your interest in this specific feature. It is not something we've been able to tackle, but is still on our Customer Wishlist.

[jesseelliott]

Anybody working toward this recently? We would use it every day

[Aaron]

Thanks. One of the main roadblocks is that the Folder Compare doesn't necessarily have the full comparison loaded. Depending on the scan, we can return a status early, such as during a binary scan as soon as we hit any difference. Scanning every file fully would be required, so we would need to compensate for this slower scan time.

[jesseelliott]

Aaron,

I completely agree with you -- you guys have added a tremendous amount of features in that time period! Please understand that I think you have an outstanding piece of software. It just seems like this is a pretty trivial feature given that you already have configurable columns, and the number of differences given in the report (which comes up almost instantaneously) is already calculated somewhere. Thanks again, and I do understand what it's like to have limited resources!

[Aaron]

Hello,

Sorry we haven't been able to tackle this feature request yet. We're a smaller company with limited resources, and have many enhancements in queue. We've added a lot to the program in this amount of time, as well as a lot of 'under the hood' improvements that allow us to handle very large files and folders. Most recently, we're adding 64bit support for Windows and Linux (BC4.1, currently in beta). Our developers visit our wishlist to get ideas for new enhancements and work them in between other projects, or related projects. It's useful to know this specific feature is holding you back; I'll add these notes to our tracker on the subject.

[jesseelliott]

Our company has been using Beyond Compare for over 10 years, and we love it! But not having a difference count per file is a real drag. We asked for this feature in April of 2004 and got the following reply:

I'll add the request for a listing of the number of file differences in the folder viewer to our feature request database.

Chris Kennedy
Scooter Software

Is this really such a hard feature to add? Clearly there is interest, and I think all customers would quickly realize how useful it is even if they don't know they want it now.

This is the one thing that we miss from Araxis Merge. That little column just gives so much information. It's all about managing expectations. It's sometimes discouraging to see hundreds or thousands of different files, but if most of them have only single digit differences, that's really nice to know!

[Aaron]

Hello,

We do not expose this information as a column in the current release, but it is on our wishlist. You can get this information by using the Edit menu -> Expand All, Select All Files, then Actions menu -> File Compare Report and generate a report (View in Browser or Print Preview). The Layout Summary is probably the type of information you are looking for.

[gameridian]

I found this thread after searching for a way to view the number of differences between files in BC while in folder view. I use Winmerge a lot and I find the number of differences column a very useful feature when trying to get quick estimates of differences between large groups of files. It's disappointing to find that this ability has was put on the BC customer wishlist over 4 years ago and is still not available.

[Chris]

Sorry, it still isn't possible to display the number of differences in the Folder Compare in our current version 4.0.1.

You can output the number of different lines as a report from the Folder Compare. Select the files to include in the report, then use the "Actions > File Compare Report" command and select "Summary" as the report layout.

[Jemmeh]

Is this still not a feature? I'm trying to see if there's a way to do this at current. It's an absolute necessity for my work to have the number of differences between files, the way Araxis Merge allows.

[empe]

Ok, thanks for the answers. We would like to purchase about one hundred licences, but without these features I think we have to look for an other product like A.....

[Aaron]

Alignment in the Folder Compare is currently based on File name (and Folder Structure unless ignored). It is on our wishlist to enhance this and allow for different criteria to control the alignment.

Displaying the detected differences would require this alignment, and is still on our Customer Wishlist.