Re: Ada source comparison

[Jeffrey Carter <jrcarter@acm.org>]

Gautier Write-only-address wrote:
> 
> >   a) run a pretty printer on both, then compare the pretty-printed
> >source files.
> >   b) compile both and compare the resulting object files (may differ
> >slightly in a timestamp but shouldn't differ much more than that).
> 
> Thank you for the ideas - in fact I already used b) but I was
> looking for a more civilized method.

I don't know if it's any more "civilized", but I have a program that
counts the number of source lines, comments, and terminator semicolons,
and calculates the sum mod 256 of the Character'Pos of all
non-whitespace, non-comment characters in the file. It's not intended
for this purpose, but one would expect the number of comments and
terminator semicolons to be the same if the only difference is
formatting. If the case of identifiers is the same, then the hash would
also be the same. While not guaranteed, it would be pretty rare for two
different units to have the same counts and hash.

Someone (Rosen?) has an uglifier that exists for the purpose of
comparing source files. You might want to try to find it.

-- 
Jeff Carter
"My brain hurts!"
Monty Python's Flying Circus