This page contains settings that apply to lines in text comparisons performed by both file and folder comparisons.
Ignore differences in whitespace at the start of lines
Choose this setting to ignore whitespace (spaces, tabs, carriage returns and line endings) at the start of lines when comparing files.
Ignore differences in whitespace at the end of lines
Choose this setting to ignore whitespace (spaces, tabs, carriage returns and line endings) at the end of lines when comparing files.
Treat consecutive whitespace as a single space
Check this setting to ignore differences caused by the introduction of extra whitespace characters following an existing whitespace character.
Ignore all differences in whitespace
Choose this setting to ignore all whitespace (spaces, tabs, carriage returns and line endings) within lines when comparing files.
Ignore differences in character case
Select this setting to make Merge ignore the case of characters within lines. This is particularly useful if you are comparing source code for case-insensitive programming languages.
Ignore differences in line-ending characters (CR and LF)
Select this setting to make Merge ignore differences between Windows-style line endings (CR LF), UNIX line endings (LF) and Macintosh line endings (CR) when comparing files.
Ignore characters in the following column number/ranges checkbox
Check this setting to enable the column filters entered below.
Ignore characters in the following column number/ranges entry field
Enter the columns that you want ignored when comparing lines. Ignoring columns can be useful when comparing files that contain well-formatted tabular data, especially if you have difficulty constructing suitable regular expressions.
Column numbers should be separated by commas. To specify a range of columns, use the format n-m. You can omit the second number in the range to leave the range open-ended, in which case the range extends to the end of the line. Columns are numbered starting from 1 (not 0).
For example:
1-8,10,12,14,80-
Note: tab characters are counted as a single column character, irrespective of any tab expansion settings that have been configured.
Numeric comparison absolute tolerance
This field defines the absolute tolerance used when comparing numerical values in text files whose type is defined as Text with numeric data on the File Types settings page. Corresponding numeric values will be considered identical if they differ by an amount less than or equal to the value specified here.
For more information, see Comparing files with numeric data.
Numeric comparison ratio (A-B/A) tolerance
This field defines the ratio tolerance used when comparing numerical values in text files whose type is defined as Text with numeric data on the File Types settings page. Corresponding numeric values will be considered identical if the calculated ratio between them is less than or equal to the value specified here. The ratio is (A-B/A), where A is the value in the first or third pane and B is the value in the second pane.
For more information, see Comparing files with numeric data.
Numbers match if within absolute and ratio tolerances
Choose this setting if you wish corresponding numeric values to be considered identical only when within both the absolute and ratio tolerances.
Numbers match if within either tolerance
Select this setting if you wish corresponding numeric values to be considered identical if within at either the absolute tolerance or the ratio tolerance.