Shulou(Shulou.com)06/02 Report--

In this issue, the editor will bring you about how to use Meld to graphically compare files and folders in Linux. The article is rich in content and analyzes and describes for you from a professional point of view. I hope you can get something after reading this article.

How to compare two similar files to check for differences? The obvious answer is to use the diff command in Linux. The problem is that not everyone can easily compare files in a Linux terminal, and the output of the diff command may confuse some people.

Take the output of this diff command as an example:

There must be a learning curve involved. However, if you are using desktop Linux, you can use the GUI application to easily compare whether there are any differences between the two files. There are several GUI difference comparison tools in Linux. I will highlight my favorite tool, Meld, in this week's highlight of the Linux app.

Visual comparison and merging tools under Meld:Linux (and Windows)

With Meld, you can compare two files side by side. Not only that, you can also modify the file accordingly. This is what you want to do in most cases, right?

Meld can also compare directories and show which files are different. It will also be displayed and the file is new or missing.

You can also use Meld for three-way comparison.

Graphical side-by-side comparisons are helpful in many cases. If you are a developer, you can use it to learn about code patches. Meld also supports version control systems such as Git, Mercurial, Subversion, etc.

The function of Meld

The open source Meld tool has the following main functions:

Compare the differences between two-way and three-way

Edit the file in place, and update the difference immediately.

Navigate between differences and conflicts

Visualize global and local differences by inserting, changing, and conflicts accordingly

Use regular text filtering to ignore some differences

Syntax highlighting

Compare two or three directories to see if there are any new, missing, or changed files

Exclude some files from the comparison

Support for popular version control systems such as Git, Mercurial, Bazaar and SVN

Support for multiple international languages

Open source GPL v2 license

Can be used for both Linux and Windows

Install Meld on Linux

Meld is a popular application that is available in the official repository of most Linux distributions. Check the software center of your distribution to see if Meld is available.

Alternatively, you can use your distribution's command line package manager to install Meld. On Ubuntu, it can be found in the Universe repository and can be installed using the apt command:

Sudo apt install meld

You can find the source code of Meld in GNOME's GitLab repository: "https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/meld""

I know that most modern open source editors have this feature, but sometimes you just want a simple interface without having to install additional add-ons to compare files. Meld provides you with such a feature.

The above is the editor for you to share how to use Meld in Linux to graphically compare files and folders, if you happen to have similar doubts, you can refer to the above analysis to understand. If you want to know more about it, you are welcome to follow the industry information channel.

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