Partial Diff

Features

• You can compare (diff) text selections within a file, across different files, or to the clipboard.
• Multi cursor text selection.
• User defined text normalization rules to reduce the noise in the diff (e.g. replace tab characters to spaces).
• User defined text normalization rules can be toggled off without removing them from the configuration.
• Compare text in 2 visible editors (i.e. tabs) with one action.

Commands

• Select Text for Compare (Command ID: extension.partialDiff.markSection1)

  Marks the selected text as the text to compare the next selection with.

• Compare Text with Previous Selection (Command ID: extension.partialDiff.markSection2AndTakeDiff)

  Compares the selected text to the first selection.

• Compare Text with Clipboard (Command ID: extension.partialDiff.diffSelectionWithClipboard)

  Compares the current clipboard to the selected text.

• Compare Text in Visible Editors (Command ID: extension.partialDiff.diffVisibleEditors)

  Compares text in 2 visible editors.

• Toggle Pre-Comparison Text Normalization Rules (Command ID: extension.partialDiff.togglePreComparisonTextNormalizationRules)

  Toggle pre-comparison text normalization rules.

NOTE:

• A diff will be shown only after selecting comparison text first (using Select Text for Compare) except Compare Text in Visible Editors.
• Executing Select Text for Compare, Compare Text with Previous Selection or Compare Text in Visible Editors command without selecting any text will use the entire text of the current file.

Configurations

• partialDiff.preComparisonTextNormalizationRules: Rules to normalize texts for diff view.

  It doesn't mutate texts in the editors. Only texts in diff views get normalised. If a diff is presented with text normalised (or possibly normalised), ~ is used in the diff title instead of ↔)

  Each rule has match, replaceWith and optionally name.

  • name: Optional. Name of the rule to describe what the rule is for. You see this name on normalisation rule toggle menu.
  • match: Regular expression to find text you want to normalise. Global search flag is automatically applied.
  • replaceWith: One of the following
    • Replacement text as a string. You can use $N, where N is the index of substring (starting from 1) you captured in match with ().
    • Letter case specification as an object. Valid cases are upper and lower.
  • enableOnStart: Optional. Set it false if you don't want to use the rule when the extension starts up.

  Sample preComparisonTextNormalizationRules:

  "partialDiff.preComparisonTextNormalizationRules": [
    {
      "name": "Replace tabs with whitespaces",
      "match": "\t",
      "replaceWith": "  "
    },
    {
      "name": "One space after comma",
      "match": ", *([^,\n]+)",
      "replaceWith": ", $1"
    },
    {
      "name": "Capitalise",
      "match": ".*",
      "replaceWith": {"letterCase": "upper"},
      "enableOnStart": false
    }
    ...
  ]
  

Keyboard Shortcuts

You can quickly mark the selected text by adding the partial-diff commands to your keyboard shortcut settings. For example:

  { "key": "ctrl+1", "command": "extension.partialDiff.markSection1",
                        "when": "editorTextFocus" },
  { "key": "ctrl+2", "command": "extension.partialDiff.markSection2AndTakeDiff",
                        "when": "editorTextFocus" },
  { "key": "ctrl+3", "command": "extension.partialDiff.diffSelectionWithClipboard",
                        "when": "editorTextFocus" },

Known problems

• If you want to compare text in Output channels, you'll need to execute the commands via keyboard shortcuts or the context menu (i.e. right-click menu). Executing the commands through the command palette doesn't work. See Cannot compare texts in Outputs channel if the mark text commands are executed from the command palette.

Request Features or Report Bugs

• https://github.com/ryu1kn/vscode-partial-diff/issues

Changelog

• https://github.com/ryu1kn/vscode-partial-diff/blob/master/CHANGELOG.md

How to Contribute

1. Clone this repository

2. Make code changes

3. Before you make a pull request, you can run linter and tests to avoid build failure

   $ yarn run prep