Comparing differences between text files is an important task for developers and writers. Visual Studio Code has excellent built-in support for quickly comparing two text files side-by-side.
Table of Contents
Why Compare Text Files
There are several reasons you may need to compare text files:
- Compare code changes when developing software
- Review differences between draft versions of a document
- Validate data changes in log files or CSV files
- Check translations between language files
- Identify formatting inconsistencies between text files
Carefully reviewing differences between text files helps ensure consistency, accuracy, and quality.
Built-In Compare Feature in VS Code
Visual Studio Code has a built-in compare feature that makes it easy to spot differences between two text files.
Here are some key benefits of using VS Code for text comparisons:
- Fast side-by-side diff viewer
- Intuitive workflow for selecting files to compare
- Support for comparing unsaved files
- Integration with source control
- Extensibility for custom comparisons
The diff viewer in VS Code displays added, modified, and removed content using color coding and highlights to quickly identify changes between two files.
Compare Text Files Step-By-Step
Follow these steps to compare two text files in VS Code:
Open Files to Compare
First, open both files you want to compare in VS Code. You can open files through the File > Open menu or by right-clicking a file in the Explorer pane and selecting Open.
Select First File
Next, in the Explorer pane, right-click the first file you want to compare and choose Select for Compare. This will mark the first file as the file to compare against.
Select first file for compare
Compare Second File
After selecting the first file, right-click the second file in Explorer and choose Compare with Selected.
Compare second file
VS Code will then open a diff editor panel displaying both files side-by-side with differences highlighted.
Review Diffs
Now you can scroll through the diff viewer and review differences between the two files.
- Added text appears highlighted green
- Removed text appears highlighted red
- Changed text appears highlighted blue
Use the diff viewer to carefully review changes between the files.
Review differences
Compare All Changes
By default, VS Code filters some changes like whitespace to reduce noise in the diff viewer. To show all changes:
- Click the More Actions button in the diff editor toolbar
- Enable Show All Changes
Now every single difference will be highlighted, including whitespace, punctuation, etc.
Compare File Revisions
You can also use VS Code to compare different revisions of a file checked into source control:
- Click the Source Control icon in the Activity Bar
- Right-click file and choose Open Changes
- Select revisions to compare
This allows reviewing historic changes to a file managed in source control.
Customize Comparisons
There are several ways to customize text comparisons in VS Code:
- Change diff algorithm
- Show minimap diff map
- Ignore trim whitespace
- Configure character-level or line-level comparisons
- Increase diff pane height
Refer to VS Code documentation for more details on customization options.
Summary
- The built-in compare tool makes comparing text files fast and intuitive
- Select one file then right-click compare with second file
- Side-by-side diff viewer clearly highlights file differences
- Integrates with source control to compare historic revisions
- Highly customizable to tune comparisons
Learning to efficiently compare differences between text files using VS Code will improve development and writing workflows.
