This a a forked version of the diffy gem, because we needed a patch to work around a deficiency in the odba gem, which tried to persist closed (temp) files.

Need diffs in your ruby app? Diffy has you covered. It provides a convenient way to generate a diff from two strings or files. Instead of reimplementing the LCS diff algorithm Diffy uses battle tested Unix diff to generate diffs, and focuses on providing a convenient interface, and getting out of your way.

It provides several built in format options which can be passed to Diffy::Diff#to_s.

• :text - Plain text output
• :color - ANSI colorized text suitable for use in a terminal
• :html - HTML output. Since version 2.0 this format does inline highlighting of the character changes between lines.
• :html_simple - HTML output without inline highlighting. This may be useful in situations where high performance is required or simpler output is desired.

A default format can be set like so:

Diffy::Diff.default_format = :html

gem build
gem install diffy

1. Ensure that you have a working diff on your machine and in your search path.

   There are several options:

   1. Install Diff::LCS, which includes ldiff. RSpec depends on Diff::LCS so you may already have it installed.

   2. If you're using RubyInstaller, install the devkit.

   3. Install unxutils http://sourceforge.net/projects/unxutils

      note that these tools contain diff 2.7 which has a different handling of whitespace in the diff results. This makes Diffy spec tests yielding one fail on Windows.

   4. Install these two individually from the gnuwin32 project http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/

      note that this delivers diff 2.8 which makes Diffy spec pass even on Windows.

2. Install the gem by

   gem install diffy
   

Here's an example of using Diffy to diff two strings

$ irb
>> string1 = <<-TXT
>" Hello how are you
>" I'm fine
>" That's great
>" TXT
=> "Hello how are you\nI'm fine\nThat's great\n"
>> string2 = <<-TXT
>" Hello how are you?
>" I'm fine
>" That's swell
>" TXT
=> "Hello how are you?\nI'm fine\nThat's swell\n"
>> puts Diffy::Diff.new(string1, string2)
-Hello how are you
+Hello how are you?
 I'm fine
-That's great
+That's swell

Outputing the diff as html is easy too. Here's an example using the :html_simple formatter.

>> puts Diffy::Diff.new(string1, string2).to_s(:html_simple)
<div class="diff">
  <ul>
    <li class="del"><del>Hello how are you</del></li>
    <li class="ins"><ins>Hello how are you?</ins></li>
    <li class="unchanged"><span>I'm fine</span></li>
    <li class="del"><del>That's great</del></li>
    <li class="ins"><ins>That's swell</ins></li>
  </ul>
</div>

The :html formatter will give you inline highlighting a la github.

>> puts Diffy::Diff.new("foo\n", "Foo\n").to_s(:html)
<div class="diff">
  <ul>
    <li class="del"><del><strong>f</strong>oo</del></li>
    <li class="ins"><ins><strong>F</strong>oo</ins></li>
  </ul>
</div>

There's some pretty nice css provided in Diffy::CSS.

>> puts Diffy::CSS
.diff{overflow:auto;}
.diff ul{background:#fff;overflow:auto;font-size:13px;list-style:none;margin:0;padding:0;display:table;width:100%;}
.diff del, .diff ins{display:block;text-decoration:none;}
.diff li{padding:0; display:table-row;margin: 0;height:1em;}
.diff li.ins{background:#dfd; color:#080}
.diff li.del{background:#fee; color:#b00}
.diff li:hover{background:#ffc}
/* try 'whitespace:pre;' if you don't want lines to wrap */
.diff del, .diff ins, .diff span{white-space:pre-wrap;font-family:courier;}
.diff del strong{font-weight:normal;background:#fcc;}
.diff ins strong{font-weight:normal;background:#9f9;}
.diff li.diff-comment { display: none; }
.diff li.diff-block-info { background: none repeat scroll 0 0 gray; }

There's also a colorblind-safe version of the pallete provided in Diffy::CSS_COLORBLIND_1.

Side-by-side comparisons, or split views as called by some, are supported by using the Diffy::SplitDiff class. This class takes a diff returned from Diffy::Diff and splits it in two parts (or two sides): left and right. The left side represents deletions while the right side represents insertions.

The class is used as follows:

Diffy::SplitDiff.new(string1, string2, options = {})

The optional options hash is passed along to the main Diff::Diff class, so all default options such as full diff output are supported. The output format may be changed by passing the format with the options hash (see below), and all default formats are supported.

Unlike Diffy::Diff, Diffy::SplitDiff does not use #to_s to output the resulting diff. Instead, two self-explanatory methods are used to output the diff: #left and #right. Using the earlier example, this is what they look like in action:

>> puts Diffy::SplitDiff.new(string1, string2).left
-Hello how are you
 I'm fine
-That's great

>> puts Diffy::SplitDiff.new(string1, string2).right
+Hello how are you?
 I'm fine
+That's swell

The output format may be changed by passing the format with the options hash:

Diffy::SplitDiff.new(string1, string2, :format => :html)

This will result in the following:

>> puts Diffy::SplitDiff.new(string1, string2, :format => :html).left
<div class="diff">
  <ul>
    <li class="del"><del>Hello how are you</del></li>
    <li class="unchanged"><span>I&#39;m fine</span></li>
    <li class="del"><del>That&#39;s <strong>great</strong></del></li>
  </ul>
</div>

>> puts Diffy::SplitDiff.new(string1, string2, :format => :html).right
<div class="diff">
  <ul>
    <li class="ins"><ins>Hello how are you<strong>?</strong></ins></li>
    <li class="unchanged"><span>I&#39;m fine</span></li>
    <li class="ins"><ins>That&#39;s <strong>swell</strong></ins></li>
  </ul>
</div>

You can diff files instead of strings by using the :source option.

>> puts Diffy::Diff.new('/tmp/foo', '/tmp/bar', :source => 'files')

By default Diffy removes the superfluous diff output. This is because its default is to show the complete diff'ed file (diff -U 10000 is the default).

Diffy does support full output, just use the :include_diff_info => true option when initializing:

>> Diffy::Diff.new("foo\nbar\n", "foo\nbar\nbaz\n", :include_diff_info => true).to_s(:text)
=>--- /Users/chaffeqa/Projects/stiwiki/tmp/diffy20111116-82153-ie27ex	2011-11-16 20:16:41.000000000 -0500
+++ /Users/chaffeqa/Projects/stiwiki/tmp/diffy20111116-82153-wzrhw5	2011-11-16 20:16:41.000000000 -0500
@@ -1,2 +1,3 @@
 foo
 bar
+baz

And even deals a bit with the formatting!

By default Diffy will return empty string if there are no differences in inputs. In previous versions the full text of its first input was returned in this case. To restore this behaviour simply use the :allow_empty_diff => false option when initializing.

By default Diffy doesn't include the +, -, and at the beginning of line for HTML output.

You can use the :include_plus_and_minus_in_html option to include those symbols in the output.

>> puts Diffy::Diff.new(string1, string2, :include_plus_and_minus_in_html => true).to_s(:html_simple)
<div class="diff">
  <ul>
    <li class="del"><del><span class="symbol">-</span>Hello how are you</del></li>
    <li class="ins"><ins><span class="symbol">+</span>Hello how are you?</ins></li>
    <li class="unchanged"><span class="symbol"> </span><span>I'm fine</span></li>
    <li class="del"><del><span class="symbol">-</span>That's great</del></li>
    <li class="ins"><ins><span class="symbol">+</span>That's swell</ins></li>
  </ul>
</div>

You can use the :context option to override the number of lines of context that are shown around each change (this defaults to 10000 to show the full file).

>> puts Diffy::Diff.new("foo\nfoo\nBAR\nbang\nbaz", "foo\nfoo\nbar\nbang\nbaz", :context => 1)
 foo
-BAR
+bar
 bang

You can use the :diff option to override the command line options that are passed to unix diff. They default to -U 10000. This option will noop if combined with the :context option.

>> puts Diffy::Diff.new(" foo\nbar\n", "foo\nbar\n", :diff => "-w")
  foo
 bar

You can set the default options for new Diffy::Diffs using the Diffy::Diff.default_options and Diffy::Diff.default_options= methods. Options passed to Diffy::Diff.new will be merged into the default options.

>> Diffy::Diff.default_options
=> {:diff=>"-U 10000", :source=>"strings", :include_diff_info=>false, :include_plus_and_minus_in_html=>false}
>> Diffy::Diff.default_options.merge!(:source => 'files')
=> {:diff=>"-U 10000", :source=>"files", :include_diff_info=>false, :include_plus_and_minus_in_html=>false}

Diffy tries to make generating your own custom formatted output easy. Diffy::Diff provides an enumerable interface which lets you iterate over lines in the diff.

>> Diffy::Diff.new("foo\nbar\n", "foo\nbar\nbaz\n").each do |line|
>*   case line
>>   when /^\+/ then puts "line #{line.chomp} added"
>>   when /^-/ then puts "line #{line.chomp} removed"
>>   end
>> end
line +baz added
=> [" foo\n", " bar\n", "+baz\n"]

You can also use Diffy::Diff#each_chunk to iterate each grouping of additions, deletions, and unchanged in a diff.

>> Diffy::Diff.new("foo\nbar\nbang\nbaz\n", "foo\nbar\nbing\nbong\n").each_chunk.to_a
=> [" foo\n bar\n", "-bang\n-baz\n", "+bing\n+bong\n"]

Use #map, #inject, or any of Enumerable's methods. Go crazy.

Diffy includes a full set of rspec tests. When contributing please include tests for your changes.

Report bugs or request features at http://github.com/samg/diffy/issues