ExamDiff Pro Version History

Note: dates listed here are those of first stable version builds. Dates and details of subsequent builds can be accessed via the "Build history" links.

New features:

• Table comparison (Master edition)
• Scope bar (class/function detection)
• Windows 11 support
• Ability to reset pane layout to default
• View commands to zoom in/out views
• Ability to copy HEX dump of data in binary comparison
• Ability to use advanced diff algorithms in binary comparison
• Option to show selection check boxes in directory comparison views

Improvements:

• Suppress dark mode for diff report printing
• Ability to skip resolved differences

Bug fixes:

• Multiple bug fixes

New features:

• New and improved diff algorithms
• Ability to ignore columns in tab/comma-separated files (referred to by their indices)
• Improved Dark Theme and ability to detect theme automatically from Windows settings
• Recently compared files/directories in the main menu
• Apply button in the Options dialog
• Options search now includes messages under Misc | Messages
• New dialog for saving files if both are modified
• Customize command in the menu under View | Toolbar
• Dump TLB plug-in (by OleWoo)

Bug fixes:

• Multiple bug fixes

Improvements:

• Usability improvements to Options dialog

New features:

• Explorer-like column filters in directory comparison
• Show diff statistics in a chart
• New HTML template
• Ability to reset all settings
• Ability to launch multiple file comparison sessions from directory comparison, one for each selected file
• Skip Difference enhancements
• Built-in support for PowerShell documents
• Option to open new comparison instance from directory comparison on another monitor
• UI enhancements: dark theme, flattened UI
• Support for Windows jump lists

Bug fixes:

• Multiple bug fixes

Improvements:

• Significantly faster directory comparison in full file comparison mode
• Text file comparison performance improvements
• Installation improvements
• Better mouse wheel scroll behavior in Windows 10
• Improvement: More intuitive text comparison results
• Better saving/restoring of manual synchronization links
• Separated Line-by-line setting in Options | Test Compare | Advanced from Fuzzy comparison settings, and made the latter more user-friendly
• Better sorting in directory comparison
• Loading file/directory from the pane title bar will now recompare if the Auto-Compare option is turned on

New features:

• Ability to compare file/directory lists (Master edition)
• Ability to create directory comparison HTML diff report with links to file comparison HTML diff reports (Master edition)
• Quick Compare options
• Fuzzy string matching support for inline text comparison
• Option to exclude files by attribute in directory comparison (especially useful for hidden files/folders)
• New "Ignore subdirectories" option for "Handling of subdirectories" under Options | Directory Compare
• Option to automatically re-compare after save
• Ability to hide menu bar

Bug fixes:

• Changed window size sometimes did not persist after re-compare

Improvements:

• The "Copy Line to Other File" command has been extended to "Copy Line(s) to Other File"

New features:

• Updated user interface
  • Modern UI theme
  • Multiple toolbars with additional customization options
  • New toolbar and menu icons
  • High DPI support
• Fast (byte-by-byte) binary comparison
• Merge additions (Master edition)
• Logging to the new output pane and/or a log file
• Option to remove trailing whitespaces from lines during saving of text files

Bug fixes:

• Stopping parallel full comparison caused files to be marked with "Error" status or to be erroneously marked as identical
• Options and sessions files were not saved with the Unicode Byte Order Mark (BOM)
• Incorrect line numbering after Add Block, Delete Block, and Split Block commands

Improvements:

• Better detection of comments for programming languages supported by syntax highlighting
• Better text/binary detection
• Better performance of 3-Way Diff And Merge
• Better performance of parallel full comparison
• Explorer context menu is now enabled even if selected files are in different directories (Windows Vista and higher)

New features:

• Ability to group directory comparison items
• Allow to Go Up One Level/Drill Down in directory comparison without re-comparison (using cached diff results)
• Ability to use Left/Center/Right blocks by default if a conflict occurs during merging (Master edition)
• Command line option /statsonly to output only comparison statistics
• Automatically save/restore manual synchronization links
• Ability to customize file/directory captions
• Allow using Windows environment variables in Options paths
• Option to convert new tabs to spaces during text file editing
• Ability to customize print report heading via Page Setup (which includes making it blank)
• Option to force comparisons from Windows Explorer context menu with the older/newer file/directory as first
• Ability to apply ignored line and column ranges only to the first or to the second file using 1: or 2: prefixes, e.g. 1:1-6 (by default ranges apply to both files)
• "Merge Matched" and "Merge Selected" commands in the Advanced sub-menu of the directory comparison views context menu (Master edition)
• Command line options /dt1:name, /dt2:name, /dt3:name to allow replacing "Theirs", "Base", and "Yours" tags in merging (Master edition)
• Windows 10 Support

Improvements:

• Improved performance of directory comparison
• Ability to toggle option "Ignore Linebreak styles" via customized toolbar
• Added more file attributes to the supported ones (RHSA) in directory comparison views
• Manual synchronization links are now saved per session and also saved into session files
• Bookmarks are now preserved during re-comparison
• Improved support for Wine 1.8

New features:

• Two-way merge (Master edition)
• Line Inspector in merge mode (Master edition)
• Parallel full comparison
• Export/Import Settings commands
• Ability to search for options
• Ability to search in toolbar customization dialog
• Windows 8.1 support
• Ability to clear comparison history, recent sessions, and recent session files
• New directory comparison context menu commands:

• Ctrl-Mouse wheel adjusts font size
• Option to make the directory comparison backup directory hidden
• Text file encoding shown in status bars and highlighted if different

Bug fixes:

• Empty directory not matching comparison filters were still shown in directory comparison

Improvements:

• New Tools menu for settings-related commands
• New Options | Tools pane for options pertaining to external tools
• Improved layout for many dialogs
• Reorganized directory comparison context menu to make rarely used commands less prominent
• Rearranged "Comparison precision" settings under Options | Directory Compare
• Newer/Older file comparison status panes are now colored

New features:

• Standard and Master editions
• Three-way diff and merge
• Quick view filters
• Overall difference navigation
• Redesigned HTML diff report, with improved diff navigation and selection
• Windows 8 support
• New document types: Ruby, CSS, and JavaScript
• Ability to limit number of subdirectory levels in recursive comparison
• Ability to lock toolbars
• Allow full paths in the title bar
• Option to limit update check frequency
• New command line option:

Bug fixes:

• Selected padding lines were indented and lost their padding status when the Tab key was pressed in text comparison
• /fi and /fx options did not automatically enable the "Use comparison filters" option along with the specified filters
• Resetting plug-ins to default did not properly recover installed plug-ins
• Line numbers were being selected along with text in HTML diff reports

Improvements:

• More intuitive keyboard shortcuts for difference navigation commands
• Rearranged options

New features:

• Automated directory synchronization
• Support for Office 2007/2010 documents (Word, Excel, PowerPoint)
• Option to ignore text file lines by their numbers
• Option to ignore blank lines at the end of a file
• New navigation commands:

• Ability to browse for file/directory directly in the main window via the Browse buttons
• Ability to denote text/binary files by name filter
• Option to copy adjacent ignored lines when diff blocks are replaced
• Option to swap diff and color bars for the first pane
• New command line option:

• New buttons for existing commands can now be added to the toolbar:

Bug fixes:

• When "Save files before re-comparison" was set, clipboard contents caused the "Save first file" dialog and the "Save second file" dialogs to appear twice
• Ignoring trailing whitespaces in lines failed in certain situations
• HTML diff reports did not resize correctly in Chrome
• Horizontally-split HTML diff reports did not resize correctly
• Minor issues in HTML and XML syntax highlighting
• High memory consumption in text file comparison

Improvements:

• Options | Compare panel reorganized to group similar Ignore options together
• Changed the way empty directories are presented (directory name instead of "<Empty directory>")
• Zero similarity matching is enabled even if the file size is larger than the fuzzy matching threshold
• Icons on the Compare dialog buttons
• Icons on the Print Preview dialog buttons

New features:

• Line Inspector panel for easy recognition of differences within lines
• Synchronization buttons for directory comparison
• Windows 7 support
• Hide and Hide All But These context menu commands in directory comparison to hide items until the next recomparison
• Ability to combine directory comparison sort results from both panes
• Use Comparison Filters command to enable/disable the use of filters specified in the Options | Dir Comparison | Filters panel
• Option to only show second items that have already been compared to the first item in the Compare dialog drop-down boxes
• Improved file change notifications for directory comparison:

• Automatic detection of Unicode files without BOMs, where possible
• Plug-in matching by name filter as opposed to extensions
• Copy Line to Other File context menu command in file comparison
• Split Diffs command for changed diff blocks in text file comparison that converts the changed block into two blocks (added and deleted)
• Ability to email HTML diff reports by spawning the default email client
• Ability to open containing folder via context menu in file and directory comparison
• New buttons for existing commands can now be added to the toolbar:

Bug fixes:

• Right-click name filtering is no longer broken
• Clipboard selection now works together with the "Fun comparison in new instance of ExamDiff Pro" option
• Shell integration now works correctly with file and directory shortcuts

Improvements:

• Ignore the Ignores command renamed to Use Ignores and behavior reversed
• Reorganization of the View menu to group all Options-related commands together
• Options | Display panel organized into three distinct sections: Common Options, File Comparison, and Directory Comparison
• Improved handling of empty directories in recursive directory comparison:

• Significantly reduced size of HTML diff reports
• Filter icon in status bar colored red to match the Use Comparison Filters toolbar button

New features:

• Fuzzy line matching
• Ability to recognize moved text blocks
• Improvements in text editing:

• Improved diff bar (all diffs displayed, synchronization buttons, resolved diffs shown, right-click menu, tooltips)
• Ability to specify file encoding (ASCII, UTF-8, UTF-16LE or UTF-16BE) for opening and saving text files
• Highlighting and ability to navigate to changed/missing linebreaks
• Word wrap improvements:

• Ability to ignore time differences caused by daylight saving changes
• Toolbar buttons for enabling/disabling synchronized scrolling
• New information in the file status bar (size, number of lines for text files)
• Installation of both 64-bit and 32-bit Shell Extensions in 64-bit Windows
• Ability to delete items from persistent combo boxes
• Browse for files (zip, etc.) in addition to snapshots in dir comparison
• Previously undocumented command line options are now officially supported:

• Added ExamDiff Pro executable path to the Registry:

Bug fixes:

• The Ignore Comments option now works properly when comparing fragments
• After manually synchronizing two lines with different (non-ignored) linebreak characters, they are no longer shown as being equal
• Ignored trailing spaces in line differences are now marked correctly
• Manual synchronization links are no longer kept when files are closed
• Canceling a re-compare with unsaved documents no longer occasionally gives empty documents
• Move Cursor to Current Difference now functions correctly when the first inline difference is at the beginning of a line
• ExamDiff Pro no longer fails when attempting to re-compare files that no longer exist
• HTML generation for short lines (incomplete lines) now works properly
• HTML generation for ignored lines now shows full lines
• No more infinite loop in HTML diff report scrolling under Google Chrome
• Environment strings now expanded in directory comparison filters

Improvements:

• Improved multi-monitor support
• Improved change notifications that do not take into account filtered-out files
• Improved handling of large files (when not enough memory, allows switching to binary mode in order to determine whether the files are different)

New features:

• Support for customizable document types, with document-type-specific settings for tab size, comments, and syntax highlighting
• Ability to create and edit filter sets
• Name filter improvements: ability to disable filters and a new interface for editing filters
• Date and size filters in directory comparison
• "Filters" right-click menu in directory comparison:
  

• Option to perform quick full comparison of selected files in directory comparison without performing a full recompare of all files
• Ability to copy text fragments including padding lines
• "Compare To..." in Shell extension
• Ability to use environment variables (e.g. %WINDIR%) in file names
• Ability to delete matching files in both directory comparison panes
• Option to ignore word separators embedded in quoted strings during file comparison
• Ability to view report files right after saving
• Ability to independently scroll views horizontally using Alt key
• Separate "Use Plug-ins" options for file and directory comparison
• New command line options useful for merging in some version control tools:
  

• New command line option useful for comparison invoked from version control:
  

• Resizing with Shift key pressed to keep the center of the main window
• Ability to toggle Full File Comparison from the toolbar

Bug fixes:

• Fixed incorrect directory comparison of files with mixed linebreak styles in Full File Comparison mode
• Text selection was colored in Print/Print Preview
• Plug-ins that converted files into directories (such as the Unzip plug-in) are now considered during directory comparison
• Files/directories dropped from Windows Explorer sometimes incorrectly appeared in the wrong pane
• Directory snapshots can now be created from the Files menu

Improvements:

• Improved difference navigation
• Improved toolbar button defaults

New features:

• Ability to add manual synchronization points to text file comparison
• Ability to independently scroll views vertically using Alt key
• Ability to save and load session files (with .EDPI extension) that contain a pair of names of compared files or directories and a set of comparison options, along with a new command line option (/sf) to load a session file and the ability to launch a comparison by double-clicking on a session file in Windows Explorer
• Extensive drag and drop support
• Windows Vista support
• Intuitive Autopick feature in Compare dialog that remembers matching pairs
• Plug-ins are optionally installed during setup
• Plug-ins can be used to compare archives (ZIP etc.) against directories or other archives
• Default remote plug-ins can be defined to compare files and directories on the Internet
• Plug-in execution can be canceled
• Ability to show end-of-line characters using View | View End-Of-Line Markers menu command
• 'Touch' command in directory comparison views
• Option to timestamp copied files with current time
• Menu command to show/hide line numbers
• Ability to rearrange directory comparison columns by dragging them in the list headers
• Icons in Compare dialog
• Difference navigation in HTML reports
• Disabled expired features are re-enabled after the registration
• All executables are now digitally signed by a certificate of authenticity
• Improved external file/directory change notifications
• Explorer integration DLL (Shell Extension) for 64-bit Windows is now automatically installed during setup
• New command line option: /swap (swap first and second file/directory)
• Improved Help

Bug fixes:

• Messages were occasionally not shown under Windows 95/98/Me
• Occasional incorrect matching of ignored characters
• Incorrect treating text files as binary in full directory comparison
• Saving of read-only files
• Memory errors during processing of files with very long lines
• Comments were not ignored after files were processed by plug-ins
• Path view filters only worked when lower case strings were used
• East-Asian characters were not properly shown after horizontal scrolling
• "Ignore column ranges" did not ignore lines shorter than specified ranges
• Command line option /f did not work under some conditions

New features:

• Option to ignore programming language comments
• Option to ignore multiple column ranges in lines
• Compare directories produced by file plug-ins (see possible uses)
• Inline plug-ins (specified by name before file/directory names in Compare dialog)
• Option to back up files replaced during Copy operations
• "Identical items" color and effects are customizable
• Ability to reset options to defaults for current page only
• True-color toolbar with small and large buttons
• Improved performance and reduced memory footprint

Bug fixes:

• Fix for default HTML template paths
• Fix for Ignore Linebreak Styles option when not used on files with no ending linebreaks
• Fix for Save As used on clipboard contents
• Older files were always visible even though a view filter is set up not to show them
• Fix for erroneous messages during drag-n-drop operations on read-only and plugin-processed files
• Failed to recover from error when files were compared from directory comparison
• Ignore the Ignores command did not ignore "Ignore linebreak styles" option
• Wheel mouse occasionally scrolled up a page instead of several lines

New features:

• Allow to select clipboard contents instead of one of files in Compare dialog
• Copy as Text command for directory comparison
• Save As command in text file comparison context menu
• Ability to edit and save files after they are processed by plug-ins
• "True" ignoring of blank and regex-matching lines
• Allow using strikeout and underline font effects for added, changed, deleted, etc. items (note: HTML templates have changed)
• Allow applying a plug-in from the right-click menu
• "Error" status for directory comparison errors
• Allow selecting a plug-in (that overrides Options plug-ins for a given file) in Compare dialog
• Support for EBCDIC character set in displaying binary comparison results
• Option to ignore linebreak style differences (DOS/UNIX/Mac)
• Option to consider files with same CRC identical

Bug fixes:

• Entering one file/directory name in command line
• Case-sensitivity of view filters
• Empty directories (this feature was broken in 3.2c)
• Detecting Unix-style (LF) line endings

New features:

• Windows Explorer (Shell) integration
• Resolving Windows shortcuts
• Compare file CRCs when comparing directories
• Compare versions of executables and DLLs when comparing directories
• Show CRC and versions in directory comparison views

Bug fixes:

• TAB character detection in Print/Print Preview
• Occasional crashes in regular expression engine
• Handling files larger than 2 GBytes in directory comparison
• Initializing colors in when "Other" button is clicked in Options | Display | Colors
• Doubled comparison statistics in Word Wrap mode
• Not persisting "No newline at end of file" message when running from the command line

New features:

• Unicode support
• Customizable keyboard shortcuts
• Compare selected text fragments
• "Clipboard comparison" added to the Compare dialog
• Windows XP look in XP and higher
• "Newer"/"Older" fields in file status bars
• Option "Allow to copy files TO and FROM in directory comparison"
• Ability to move to the previous difference after copying a block in text file comparison
• ':' character can be used in directory comparison filters to denote path filters vs. default name filters

Bug fixes:

• Wrong timestamp comparison of files whose dates fall on Daylight Saving Time switch dates
• Printing selection in directory comparison may cause a crash

Improvements:

• Better plug-in implementation. Side effect: old plug-ins need to be exported in a previous version, then manually added in 3.2
• Better caret positioning when view filter is turned on and off

New features:

• HTML diff report
• New copy block commands (Replace in First/Second, Add to First/Second)
• Copy to Clipboard command in directory comparison
• Added comparison detail level selection to toolbar
• Wrap Search option in Find/Replace dialogs
• Command to resize directory columns to fit their content
• New command line options:
  

• Plug-ins can be applied to all files by using * extension and rearranged
• Option to show/hide "Too slow comparison?" balloon message
• Two new settings in the Registry: "Use Last Session" and "Auto-Save Session"

Bug fixes:

• Esc key in Don't Show dialogs behaves now as Close dialog button
• If Keep option was used in Merge Dialog, Sync was lost (no more merging was possible after that)
• Broken mnemonics in right-click menus
• Made Go To command in text files much faster
• Much faster file saving over a remote connection
• Re-sync bug after copying blocks with "Keep" option
• Error in creating directory by its UNC path
• Bug in not saving toolbar state on Alt + Drag'n'Drop
• If files from different directories were selected, Explorer menu was not working properly. The fix makes Explorer menu item disappear if files from different directories are selected
• Wrong resizing of Compare Dialog on fresh setup
• Bugs in /f, /d, /p command line options
• Better error reporting when files/dirs don't exist
• Not updating views after copying empty directories
• Wrong diff number was reported after re-compare under certain options
• Occasional hanging for files with only CR characters for line breaks
• Better handling of "Out of memory" errors
• Allow to copy expired registration info in About box

New features:

• Visual binary file comparison
• Named comparison sessions (with file/directory name pairs, options)
• Ability to cancel lengthy file comparison
• Added Directory handling to the tool bar (compare recursively, do not compare recursively)
• Shift + Del command to delete files permanently (from directory comparison views)
• New change notification ("Do not monitor")
• Option to display "Relative Path" only in one pane of directory comparisons (to save on screen real estate)
• Options to synchronously resize directory comparison columns and synchronize directory views horizontal scrolling
• Option of saving files where tabs are converted to N spaces
• Option where to scroll after the comparison
• File path view filter for directory comparison panes
• Explorer Menu added to right click menu on file comparison panes
• Option to reuse window position in a launched instance
• Option to advance to next difference after copying a block from one file to another
• Option to show empty directories in recursive comparison
• New command line options:
  

Bug fixes:

• Occasional hanging after directory comparison
• Copying changed blocks when the destination file does not have newline character at end of file
• Wrong cursor position after Replace/Replace All

Improvements:

• Significantly faster words and characters comparison

New features:

• View diff file (without saving)
• Customizable word separators
• Run comparison in a new instance
• Print selection
• Resizable Compare dialog
• Improved regular expressions support
• 'Select All' in directory comparison list views
• Option to consider files with different attributes different
• Count wrapped lines as one
• Option to use View Filter for diff file saving
• 'Number of diffs' column in directory comparison
• Command to close files in file comparison mode
• Ability to select columns and their sort order for directory comparison list views
• External helper applications used before comparison
• Ignore line parts matching a regular expression

Bug fixes:

• Directory comparison showed that files were different even though they were identical considering ignored blank lines or regular expressions
• Saving "Ignore of the ignores" did not work
• No crosshatches in Print and Print preview
• Directory snapshot comparison

New features:

• Color bar for graphical presentation of differences
• Option to ignore lines matching regular expression
• Options to ignore first and last characters in each line
• Option to enable / disable warning on 'no newline'
• New command line options:

Improvements:

• Improved word wrapping algorithm
• Column sizes are saved before re-comparing directories
• Split Added/Deleted view filter into two: Added and Deleted

New features:

• Directory snapshot
• Ignore blank lines
• Simple word wrap
• View/Edit in File context menu
• Option to set time zone difference for directory comparison
• Show Only Differences feature is superceded by View Filter

Bug fixes:

• Restored Compare Matched From Directories and Compare Selected From Directories lost in 2.6
• Incorrect behavior with option 'Run new instance of the program to compare from directory panes
• Find and Replace dialogs did not go away after re-compare

Improvements:

• Faster file comparison, especially for large files

New features:

• Option to show/print just the changes with a user-definable number of lines of context (for file comparison)
• Insert/overwrite mode (for file comparison)
• Bookmarks (for file comparison)
• Replace (for file comparison)
• Go to line (for file comparison)
• Regular expressions for find/replace
• Customizable toolbar
• Option to ignore background for printing
• Option to disable pane synchronization
• Command line switch to read options from a specified file (/g:file)
• Option to print file diffs when printing directory diff report (and a new command line switch /c)

Bug fixes:

• For files with over 1000 lines, the line number of the left file did not print completely
• Ctrl + Mouse Click did not unselect items in directory comparison panes
• Synchronized word wrapping
• Sorting of Path column in directory comparison panes

Improvements:

• Warn about changes before spawning external editor

New features:

• Ability to edit files within file comparison panes
• View white space in file comparison panes
• Option to show directory sizes

New features:

• New command line options:
  

Bug fixes:

• Copying and deleting multiple files in recursive directory comparison mode
• Going one level up to root directories in directory comparison mode
• Occasional crashes in print preview for directory comparison

New features:

• Directories are optionally compared recursively
• Directories are optionally marked as different if their files/directories differ
• Synchronous word wrapping of long lines
• Same window or new window option when comparing two directories from the directory comparison panes
• Ability to compare two selected (but not necessarily matched) files/directories from directory comparison panes
• "One directory level up" command to move up the directory tree in the directory comparison mode
• Additional command line switch: /p - print diff report and exit
• Status column in directory comparison mode which shows Same, Added, Deleted files/directories, and Newer and Older files or Changed directories
• Windows Explorer menu in directories right-click menu

Bug fixes:

• Multiple include filters didn't work
• Minimizing main window didn't bring "Compare Dialog" to the top under Windows 98 and Windows 2000
• File operations (copy, delete) could cause problems (including crash) in "Show Only Differences" mode
• Change notifications didn't work after file operations
• Incorrect coloring if compared files did not have carriage return at the end
• Directory comparison for root directories could produce wrong file types and icons
• Comparing files/directories by double-clicking items in directory comparison panes didn't work with "Show Only Differences" option enabled

Improvements:

• Several new options to make directory comparison faster
• Separate fonts for screen and printer
• Option to automatically re-compare files/directories if change is detected
• Number of added/deleted/changed item is shown in the status bar
• Significantly expanded online help

New features:

• Highlights differences down to the level of words or characters in changed lines
• Allows printing and print previewing of diff report
• Able to copy and delete multiple files/directories in directory comparison mode
• Additional command line switch: /o:file - output diff results to a file 'file' (or to standard output if '-' is specified) and exit
• Option to have Compare Dialog box always on top
• $COLUMN variable to pass the cursor's column number to the external editor
• Toggle between "Ignore nothing" and "Ignore what I specified to be ignored" states
• In addition to background colors, hatched patterns may be used
• In directory comparison mode, option to consider files with the same name, size and timestamp identical, making comparison significantly faster

Bug fixes:

• In file comparison mode, pressing Delete key caused a crash
• From the command line, UNC file names didn't work
• In directory comparison mode, incorrect binary files comparison
• Root directory comparison didn't work

Improvements:

• If the option to "Compare New Pair of Files" is selected, then the main window is minimized, permitting better access to the desktop with unobscured drag-and-drop
• No more serial numbers