(⚠ outdated copy from original tarball)
INSTALLATION
1) Change makefile settings to reflect
ATT vs. BSD software
termio vs. termcap
MGR vs. no MGR (MGR is a BELLCORE produced
window manager that is also available
free to the public.)
2) Then, just say "make".
If you want to "make install", you should first
change definition of INSDIR in the makefile
3) to test the software say
spiff Sample.1 Sample.2
spiff should find 4 differences and
you should see the words "added", "deleted", "changed",
and "altered" as well as four number in stand-out mode.
spiff Sample.1 Sample.2 | cat
should produce the same output, only the differences
should be underlined However, on many terminals the underlining
does not appear. So try the command
spiff Sample.1 Sample.2 | cat -v
or whatever the equivalent to cat -v is on your system.
A more complicated test set is found in Sample.3 and Sample.4
These files show how to use embedded commands to do things
like change the commenting convention and tolerances on the
fly. Be sure to run the command with the -s option to spiff:
spiff -s 'command spiffword' Sample.3 Sample.4
These files by no means provide an exhaustive test of
spiff's features. But they should give you some idea if things
are working right.
This code (or it's closely related cousins) has been run on
Vaxen running 4.3BSD, a CCI Power 6, some XENIX machines, and some
other machines running System V derivatives as well as
(thanks to eugene@ames.arpa) Cray, Amdahl and Convex machines.
4) Share and enjoy.
AUTHOR'S ADDRESS
Please send complaints, comments, praise, bug reports, etc to
Dan Nachbar
Bell Communications Research (also known as BELLCORE)
445 South St. Room 2B-389
Morristown, NJ 07960
nachbar@bellcore.com
or
bellcore!nachbar
or
(201) 829-4392 (praise only, please)
OVERVIEW OF OPERATION
Each of two input files is read and stored in core.
Then it is parsed into a series of tokens (literal strings and
floating point numbers, white space is ignored).
The token sequences are stored in core as well.
After both files have been parsed, a differencing algorithm is applied to
the token sequences. The differencing algorithm
produces an edit script, which is then passed to an output routine.
SIZE LIMITS AND OTHER DEFAULTS
file implementing limit name default value
maximum number of lines lines.h _L_MAXLINES 10000
per file
maximum number of tokens token.h K_MAXTOKENS 50000
per file
maximum line length misc.h Z_LINELEN 1024
maximum word length misc.h Z_WORDLEN 20
(length of misc buffers for
things like literal
delimiters.
NOT length of tokens which
can be virtually any length)
default absolute tolerance tol.h _T_ADEF "1e-10"
default relative tolerance tol.h _T_RDEF "1e-10"
maximum number of commands command.h _C_CMDMAX 100
in effect at one time
maximum number of commenting comment.h W_COMMAX 20
conventions that can be
in effect at one time
(not including commenting
conventions that are
restricted to beginning
of line)
maximum number of commenting comment.h W_BOLMAX 20
conventions that are
restricted to beginning of
line that are in effect at
one time
maximum number of literal comment.h W_LITMAX 20
string conventions that
can be in effect at one time
maximum number of tolerances tol.h _T_TOLMAX 10
that can be in effect at one
time
DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE CURRENT VERSION AND THE ENCLOSED PAPER
The files paper.ms and paper.out contain the nroff -ms input and
output respectively of a paper on spiff that was given the Summer '88
USENIX conference in San Francisco. Since that time many changes
have been made to the code. Many flags have changed and some have
had their meanings reversed, see the enclosed man page for the current
usage. Also, there is no longer control over the
granularity of object used when applying the differencing algorithm.
The current version of spiff always applies the differencing
in terms of individual tokens. The -t flag controls how the edit script
is printed. This arrangement more closely reflects the original intent
of having multiple differencing granularities.
PERFORMANCE
Spiff is big and slow. It is big because all the storage is
in core. It is a straightforward but boring task to move the temporary
storage into a file. Someone who cares is invited to take on the job.
Spiff is slow because whenever a choice had to be made between
speed of operation and ease of coding, speed of operation almost always lost.
As the program matures it will almost certainly get smaller and faster.
Obvious performance enhancements have been avoided in order to make the
program available as soon as possible.
COPYRIGHT
Our lawyers advise the following:
Copyright (c) 1988 Bellcore
All Rights Reserved
Permission is granted to copy or use this program, EXCEPT that it
may not be sold for profit, the copyright notice must be reproduced
on copies, and credit should be given to Bellcore where it is due.
BELLCORE MAKES NO WARRANTY AND ACCEPTS NO LIABILITY FOR THIS PROGRAM.
Given that all of the above seems to be very reasonable, there should be no
reason for anyone to not play by the rules.
NAMING CONVENTIONS USED IN THE CODE
All symbols (functions, data declarations, macros) are named as follows:
L_foo -- for names exported to other modules
and possibly used inside the module as well.
_L_foo -- for names used by more than one routine
within a module
foo -- for names used inside a single routine.
Each module uses a different value for "L" --
module files letter used implements
spiff.c Y top level routines
misc.[ch] Z various routines used throughout
strings.[ch] S routines for handling strings
edit.h E list of changes found and printed
tol.[ch] T tolerances for real numbers
token.[ch] K storage for objects
float.[ch] F manipulation of floats
floatrep.[ch] R representation of floats
line.[ch] L storage for input lines
parse.[ch] P parse for input files
command.[ch] C storage and recognition of commands
comment.[ch] W comment list maintenance
compare.[ch] X comparisons of a single token
exact.[ch] Q exact match differencing algorithm
miller.[ch] G miller/myers differencing algorithm
output.[ch] O print listing of differences
flagdefs.h U define flag bits that are used in
several of the other modules.
These #defines could have been
included in misc.c, but were separated
out because of their explicit
communication function.
visual.[ch] V screen oriented display for MGR
window manager, also contains
dummy routines for people who don't
have MGR
I haven't cleaned up visual.c yet. It probably doesn't even compile
in this version anyway. But since most people don't have mgr, this
isn't urgent.
NON-OBVIOUS DATA STRUCTURES
The Floating Point Representation
Floating point numbers are stored in a struct R_flstr
The fractional part is often called the mantissa.
The structure consists of
a flag for the sign of the factional part
the exponent in binary
a character string containing the fractional part
The structure could be converted to a float via
atof(strcat(".",mantissa)) * (10^exponent)
To be properly formed, the mantissa string must:
start with a digit between 1 and 9 (i.e. no leading zeros)
except for the zero, in which case the mantissa is exactly "0"
for the special case of zero, the exponent is always 0, and the
sign is always positive. (i.e. no negative 0)
In other words, (except for the value 0)
the mantissa is a fractional number ranging
between 0.1 (inclusive) and 1.0 (exclusive).
The exponent is interpreted as a power of 10.
Lines
there are three sets of lines:
implemented in line.c and line.h
real_lines --
the lines as they come from the file
content_lines --
a subset of reallines that excluding embedded commands
implemented in token.c and token.h
token_lines --
a subset of content_lines consisting of those lines that
have tokens that begin on them (literals can go on for
more than one line)
i.e. content_lines excluding comments and blank lines.
THE STATE OF THE CODE
Things that should be added
visual mode should handle tabs and wrapped lines
handling huge files in chunks when in using the ordinal match
algorithm. right now you have to parse and then diff the
whole thing before you get any output. often, you run out of memory.
Things that would be nice to add
output should optionally be expressed in real line numbers
(i.e. including command lines)
at present, all storage is in core. there should
be a compile time decision to allow temporary storage
in files rather than core.
that way the user could decide how to handle the
speed/space tradeoff
a front end that looked like diff should be added so that
one could drop spiff into existing shell scripts
the parser converts floats into their internal form even when
it isn't necessary.
in the miller/myer code, the code should check for matching
end sequences. it currently looks matching beginning
sequences.
Minor programming improvements (programming botches)
some of the #defines should really be enumerated types
all the routines in strings.c that alter the data at the end of
a pointer but return void should just return the correct
data. the current arrangement is a historical artifact
of the days when these routines returned a status code.
but then the code was never examined,
so i made them void . . .
comments should be added to the miller/myer code
in visual mode, ask for font by name rather than number