ExamDiff 1.8 and the "files are identical" popup

[ratty]

It's nice to see ongoing development on the freeware version (thanks - it's a great tool) and the improvements (copy without padding, better diff marker etc ) are much appreciated.

However, it seems like v1.8 now greets all identical file pairs with the same "Files ... and ... are identical. Press OK to show the files, or Cancel to quit" popup. Pre-v1.8 it would jump straight to a display of the (non-)differences between text files with the "No differences found" status line, which was rather convenient and avoided another mouse click. AFAICR the appearance of the "Files ... and identical/different" popup applied to binary files and was sensitive to the "Options -> Treat both files as text files" setting.

Any chance of having an option to reinstate previous behaviour when comparing text files?

[psguru]

Well, actually version 1.7 (and earlier versions) behave exactly the same way. You can easily verify this by downloading and running 1.7.

[ratty]

Thanks for the response, but sorry I have to beg to differ on that.

With v1.7 (and all pre-v1.8 versions that I'm aware of) the "identical" popup appears as follows:

If option "Treat both files as text files" is set
- if identical text files are compared -> no popup
- if identical binary files compared -> no popup
else
- if identical text files are compared -> no popup
- if identical binary files compared -> popup

So the popup ONLY appeared if comparing binaries and the option to treat as text files wasn't set.

[psguru]

You are right, I was comparing identical names, and in such cases 1.7 did give the message. The odd thing is that we haven't changed the code in that area, but the compiler was changed, and this appears to a side effect. Anyway, perhaps one solution would be to add a new option ("Show 'Identical' message") to the Misc options.

[psguru]

I spoke too soon. In reality 1.7 was coded differently, and in fact it had a bug in determining whether the files are identical. So 1.8 fixed this bug but the effect of this fix is the message that was intended for pre-1.8 versions.

[ratty]

Ah, okay. In that case can I vote for the "defective" behaviour pre-1.8?! OTOH, a simple "Show 'Identical' message" option as you suggest would be perfect.

Thanks for your attention.

[psguru]

The new option has been added to the latest build of 1.8 (1.8.0.2).

[ratty]

The new option has been added to the latest build of 1.8 (1.8.0.2).

Perfect. Many thanks.