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ExamDiff Pro 5.0 will feature a more sophisticated way to match plug-ins: rather than being matched to files based on extensions, plug-ins will now be matched against filenames with wildcards. All existing plug-ins will be automatically converted: for instance, the PDF to TXT plug-in will have its Extension parameter of "pdf" converted to a Name Filter parameter of "*.pdf" upon installation of ExamDiff Pro 5.0.

This feature can be useful in many contexts, especially when working with text-based plug-ins such as Sort. For example, suppose that you're test several different programs that produce an output (in this case, the prime numbers between 100 and 300) in a different order, and you wish to ensure that their output is identical.

Here are two of the output files compared to each other:

You could manually sort both files by right-clicking within the diff panes and selecting Apply Plug-in | Sort from the context menu, but this is an unwieldy approach if there are a lot of output files that must be compared in this way. Using wildcards for plug-ins presents a cleverer solution: if all the output files are of the form "output_??.txt", where ?? is a two-digit number, you can create a name filter for the Sort plug-in like this:

Now, hit Re-Compare, and voila! The two files are automatically sorted based on their filenames.

We've received a suggestion from a user to make our ExamDiff Pro blog entries more interactive by including samples of files and directories that can be downloaded so that our users can test out new features themselves. I'll try to implement this as soon as possible, so that future blog posts will include file samples, directory samples, and/or sample options files illustrating new ExamDiff Pro features.

ExamDiff Pro 5.0 will feature improved file change notifications for directory comparison: in addition to balloon messages being shown, files that have been edited will now become italicized and have their attributes updated in the comparison panes, and diff blocks will automatically change type as appropriate.

Let me illustrate this feature with some examples. To make the screenshots in this blog post easier to understand, I'm outlining files that I'm about to modify in blue and files that I've just modified in red.

To begin, I compare these two directories:

Now, I open up the file Test\1\1.edpi in an external editor, modify it, and save it. Immediately, ExamDiff Pro italicizes this file and updates its date and size, as well as showing a balloon message and underlining the directory name at the top of the pane:

Next, I modify and save Test\2\2_CRLF. Note that, in addition to the modified file being italicized and its attributes updated, the file in the right pane is now shown as being newer:

Finally, I modify and save Test\1\_test1. Likewise, the file in the left pane is now shown as being newer rather than older:

This feature can be especially useful when combined with the also-upcoming Hide feature: if you wish to monitor changes for several files in a directory, simply compare the directory to another and hide all irrelevant files. Now, seeing which files are changed is simply a matter of checking which files become italicized in the comparison pane.

One particular helpful application of this feature occurs when you are dealing with source control. Whenever you check out files in a source control system, they will be italicized in ExamDiff Pro to show, in this case, that they are no longer read-only. This is handy when you need to know which files you are able to modify with copy commands, for instance.

Sometimes diff blocks that are labeled as "changed" between two files can be better expressed as an "added" block followed by a "deleted" block. For example, in the diff block shown below, the part in the left file and the part in the right file are entirely different pieces of code:

It can be unsightly and confusing to have such blocks be labeled as "changed", and for this reason we're introducing a Split Block command in the upcoming version 5.0. Here's how it works: right-click within a changed block and select Split Block from the context menu, and the block is split into two separate diff blocks, as shown below.

Note that the order of the resulting blocks depends on whether you select the command from the left pane or the right pane, so right-clicking on the right side and selecting Split Block will result in the deleted block coming first:

Splitting blocks can be especially helpful when you are preparing an HTML diff report for somebody else and you want the differences to be displayed as clearly as possible. In this situation, you may also want to fine-tune fuzzy matching settings and/or use manual synchronization to ensure that all lines within changed blocks are aligned precisely.

In addition to making the difference clearer to see, this feature is useful if you need to copy a changed block while keeping the destination block intact: you can split the block, and then use synchronization buttons to copy a newly created deleted or added block. Note that this is equivalent to using the Add Block from First/Second File to Second/First commands.