[bug-diffutils] bug#20250: bug#20250: diff by size

[Jim Meyering]

tags 20250 notabug
close 20250
done

On Fri, Apr 3, 2015 at 6:20 AM, Andreas <address@hidden> wrote:
> Dear diff-team,
>
> this is not a bug but an idea for a diff option in further versions:
>
> Idea:
> comparison of two files by size only.
>
> why?
> makes comparison extremely fast; often no need to compare file contents
> to get a first hint whether there is a difference at all
>
> example:
> - uploading a folder with a bunch of files to a slow motion cloud;
> comparing each file by contents is very time consuming (...slow motion
> cloud)
> - as a first hint to find out about a possible difference could be the
> comparison of file size for each file uploaded with the local ones

Thanks for the suggestion, but diff already performs the optimization,
when possible, of detecting when two files have different sizes,
and in that case does not even bother to open
(much less read/compare) them.

If you want to simply compare file sizes, you can already
write a tiny shell/perl/python script to obtain and compare
those numbers, so I'm closing this auto-created "issue".
You're welcome to continue the discussion, which is being
archived at http://bugs.gnu.org/20250