Diff of Text

[Lie Ryan]

On 06/05/10 07:51, GZ wrote:
> Hi Pat,
> 
> On Jun 4, 2:55 pm, Patrick Maupin <pmau... at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Jun 3, 9:54 pm, GZ <zyzhu2... at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Hi All,
>>
>>> I am looking for an algorithm that can compare to source code files
>>> line by line and find the minimum diff. I have looked at the difflib
>>> included in python. The problem is that it is designed to make the
>>> diff results easier for humans to read, instead of minimize the size
>>> of the output differencial. I would like an algorithm implementation
>>> that gives the absolute minimum difference between the two files.
>>
>>> Can you help me?
>>
>>> Thanks,
>>> gz
>>
>> There's an "rsync.py" module in pypi -- one would think that would
>> have to solve that same problem...
>>
>> Regards,
>> Pat
> 
> No, rsync does not solve my problem.
> 
> I want a library that does unix 'diff' like function, i.e. compare two
> strings line by line and output the difference. Python's difflib does
> not work perfectly for me, because the resulting differences are
> pretty big. I would like an algorithm that generates the smallest
> differences.

is n=0 not short enough?

pprint.pprint(list(difflib.context_diff(s, t, n=0)))