[Winmerge-support] WinMerge problem?

[David Matta]

Hello, This may be just an incorrect use of WinMerge but the first test
below is certainly confusing.

I've just downloaded and installed WinMerge. I tried in on one of my
'c' files and a previous version of same.
Work just fine. Nice tool. I then tried it out on two very small binary
files each containing the same data: 5 hex bytes:
31 32 34 35 00. WinMerge message: "Binary files are different" was
displayed. Both windows showed: 1 2 3 4 (and a square symbol).

I then compared two small 5 byte files containing the same data: hex
bytes: 01 02 03 04 05. This produced the message:
"Binary files cannot be visually compared" and no indication that they
were identical. I then changed one byte in one of these
files and re-compared them. This produced the same message with no
indication that the files contained different data.

I certainly would not use this tool visually compare of binary files but
I wanted to check it on binary files since dir compares
would in most cases involve compare of binary files.

Thank you, A very nice diff tool.

[Kimmo Varis]

Hi!

[...]

Post by David Matta
I then tried it out on two very small binary
31 32 34 35 00. WinMerge message: "Binary files are different" was
displayed. Both windows showed: 1 2 3 4 (and a square symbol).
I then compared two small 5 byte files containing the same data: hex
"Binary files cannot be visually compared" and no indication that they
were identical. I then changed one byte in one of these
files and re-compared them. This produced the same message with no
indication that the files contained different data.

Thanks for reporting this!

I cannot say for sure what's happening, but I think there is some
confusion with binary file detection. You didn't mention version you
use? 2.0(.0.3) thinks file is binary if it contains bytes < 0x09. We
then got several reports people unable to load text files so 2.0.2(.0)
searches only 0x00 bytes.

Those messageboxes are admittably, and maybe even scary in way it does
not report files are different. Actually it should show only this
"Binary files cannot be visually compared" message when two files are
opened from open-dialog. In 2.0.X only way to see if binary files are
identical/different is comparing directories.

If you want, you can report this as bug to our bug-tracker in
SourceForge:
http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=13216&atid=113216

Anyway this must be fixed for next stable release.

Regards,
Kimmo