Basic file version diff algorithm

Question

I'm looking for a solution to compare two versions of the same file to get a representation of the changes/differences.

Answer 1

If it's plain text, then Google's diff-match-patch library ought to do what you want (it has a C# version).

If it's binary data, then look into the things people do to apply updates to executables (bsdiff and Courgette). They look for the minimum difference between two files so that a smaller update can be sent out to end users. Sounds similar to your needs.

Answer 2

For plain text files, you can find an open source implementation in c# here: https://github.com/mmanela/diffplex