October 28, 2006 - A New Tool in My Tester's Tool Box - WinMerge

Ok, so it's not a new tool.  But rather a new version of an old tool.

I use WinMerge all the time for comparing folders full of files, and viewing the differences.

Many times, my automated scripts will compare text (perhaps from a screen full of text) against a baseline file.  If they are the same, the script just continues.  If they are different, I note that in my log file and write the text to a file in the results folder for later analysis.  I use WinMerge for this file-comparison-analysis.

From their web site:

WinMerge is an Open Source visual text file differencing and merging tool for Win32 platforms. It is highly useful for determing what has changed between project versions, and then merging changes between versions.

http://winmerge.org/

Version 2.6.0 is the latest and greatest.

See all the tools in my tool box at

http://www.sqablogs.com/jstrazzere/55/Tester%26%2339%3Bs+Tool+Box.html