This example compares two texts. First we set up the texts, sequences
of individual single-line strings ending with newlines (such sequences
can also be obtained from the readlines() method of file-like
objects):
>>> text1 = ''' 1. Beautiful is better than ugly.
... 2. Explicit is better than implicit.
... 3. Simple is better than complex.
... 4. Complex is better than complicated.
... '''.splitlines(1)
>>> len(text1)
4
>>> text1[0][-1]
'\n'
>>> text2 = ''' 1. Beautiful is better than ugly.
... 3. Simple is better than complex.
... 4. Complicated is better than complex.
... 5. Flat is better than nested.
... '''.splitlines(1)
Next we instantiate a Differ object:
>>> d = Differ()
Note that when instantiating a Differ object we may pass
functions to filter out line and character ``junk.'' See the
Differ() constructor for details.
Finally, we compare the two:
>>> result = list(d.compare(text1, text2))
result is a list of strings, so let's pretty-print it:
>>> from pprint import pprint
>>> pprint(result)
[' 1. Beautiful is better than ugly.\n',
'- 2. Explicit is better than implicit.\n',
'- 3. Simple is better than complex.\n',
'+ 3. Simple is better than complex.\n',
'? ++ \n',
'- 4. Complex is better than complicated.\n',
'? ^ ---- ^ \n',
'+ 4. Complicated is better than complex.\n',
'? ++++ ^ ^ \n',
'+ 5. Flat is better than nested.\n']
As a single multi-line string it looks like this:
>>> import sys
>>> sys.stdout.writelines(result)
1. Beautiful is better than ugly.
- 2. Explicit is better than implicit.
- 3. Simple is better than complex.
+ 3. Simple is better than complex.
? ++
- 4. Complex is better than complicated.
? ^ ---- ^
+ 4. Complicated is better than complex.
? ++++ ^ ^
+ 5. Flat is better than nested.
