From: ara.t.howard@...
Date: 2006-01-12T10:09:39+09:00
Subject: Re: unit tests and string comparisons

On Thu, 12 Jan 2006, Joe Van Dyk wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I'm testing the equality of two rather large strings.  They look the
> same to me, but doing
>
> assert_equal "big ass long string", "big ass long string"
>
> says that they're different.  And they look very similar to me.  I
> know that they're different though, as doing "big ass long string".sum
> gives a different checksum than the other one.
>
> Any ideas on how I can easily view the differences between two long strings?

stupid - but works:

   harp:~ > cat a.rb
   a = "foobar"
   b = "foobaz"

   def sdiff a, b
     a = a.split //
     b = b.split //
     a.zip(b).each_with_index{|cc,idx| printf "%d: %s\n", idx, cc.inspect unless cc.uniq.size == 1}
   end

   sdiff a, b


   harp:~ > ruby a.rb
   5: ["r", "z"]

or just dump them to two files using 'od -c' and then use 'diff -u'.

regards.

-a
-- 
strong and healthy, who thinks of sickness until it strikes like lightning?
preoccupied with the world, who thinks of death, until it arrives like
thunder?  -- milarepa