Comparison Type Determination

During a Folder Comparison, it may be necessary to compute the file content difference to determine the status of the item. When dragging file systems items on Ellié Computing Merge or opening a comparison in Auto mode, Ellié Computing Merge needs as well to determine which content comparison algorithm to use for the given items (Image, Text, Binary).

In addition, when you are starting a comparison Ellié Computing Merge will automatically choose the right type of comparison based on the data you are selecting for comparison. For example, pasting image data will start an image comparison.

You can specify file types, those file types are activated by patterns that will be associated to a comparison type. If the file name matches patterns for various comparison types, the first matching one will be used.

If the item file does not match any file type, an internal algorithm will try to determine whether the file content is an image, text or binary.
The automatic detection algorithm will be used, this algorithm performs tests with respect to the nature of the object (file / folder) and then with respect to the content of the files. It executes these tests in the same order as above so that for example, a textual image format will be shown as an image by default (e.g. XPM).

The above algorithms are applied after the converters.

See also