From: Lothar Scholz Date: 2005-08-04T06:49:35+09:00 Subject: Re: Comparing directory contents Hello Jacob, JF> Though Brian Schr�der gave an interesting irb implementation, what you JF> really need is diff[1]. And don't despair, there is diff for JF> Windows[2] (via the command line). JF> The GNU developers have put a *lot* JF> of work and refinement into this heavily used tool -- don't reinvent JF> the wheel. And they still got nothing what even comes close to "AraxisMerge" on Windows, neither from the GUI nor from the quality of the diff algorithm. But back to the question from the original poster, i think diff is a complete wrong idea as he said he only needs the file names and the content does not matter for an installer as he puts the complete file into the setup.exe. I don't see a very ruby way to solve it as it is a not very complicated task to process strings. Build two hashs over the file lists and compare them item by item. Just parsing the previous file list would be litte bit complicated if the Installshield file format must be parsed and not a plain string list, but still it should be able to write the script in 100 lines. Or maybe i did not understand dave's real problem. -- Best regards, emailto: scholz at scriptolutions dot com Lothar Scholz http://www.ruby-ide.com CTO Scriptolutions Ruby, PHP, Python IDE 's