Line diff with context in Java

Question

Is there a Java lib for line-based diff between multi-line text chunks, that supports before/after context lines, similarly to diff -C in the Unix toolkit?

For example, suppose the first chunk is

a
b
foo
c
d

and the second chunk is

a
b
goo
c
d

then diffing with one line of context should produce something like:

 b
-foo
+goo
 c

Preferably, this should be done using a native Java lib, not calling diff as an external process.

Have you evaluated http://code.google.com/p/java-diff-utils/? — Nazar Annagurban, Jan 28 '13 at 11:21
Check out this previous post: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/132478/how-to-perform-string-diffs-in-java — kostas, Jan 28 '13 at 11:23
java-diff-utils is *really* under-documented. Can you list a short example? I didn't even find API docs. — Little Bobby Tables, Jan 28 '13 at 11:24

score 4 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 28 '13 at 11:23

4

Java doesn't have anything to perform diff out of the box. But you can use this java library. This doesn't require you to call a process like diff

answered Jan 28 '13 at 11:23

shazin

21,379
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1

Comments already direct to diff-utils, but it's really undocumented. Could you please show an example? – Little Bobby Tables Jan 28 '13 at 11:26
2

They have a wiki with Example code. http://code.google.com/p/java-diff-utils/wiki/SampleUsage – shazin Jan 28 '13 at 11:28
Examples are still very bad, but from reading the source code I somehow managed to get the general idea. – Little Bobby Tables Jan 28 '13 at 13:57

Line diff with context in Java

1 Answers1