If you’ve ever been working with files in your software program and suddenly realized the data changed in a way you hadn’t planned, it is often due to an error in data entry, coding or even programming files. In the past, in order to find out where the difference, error or change had occurred, you would need to do a line by line, or sometimes word by word comparison of before and after files in order to correct the problem.
This process can be very time-consuming, especially where there are lines of programming code which must be reviewed individually or pages of mathematical formulas which must be checked.
Another tedious and time consuming task is maintaining mail or email lists. If you have marketing lists from two or more different sources and there are similarities but not exact agreement, in the past a manual review name by name to look for duplicates was the commonest way to clean up a mailing list.
If someone made changes to a document without recording the changes, the clean up could take days, depending upon the length of the original document. Looking for difference both in terms of additions and deletions is a tedious task which...