On windows, Notepad++ compare plugin let’s you compare unsaved files. So to compare two texts copied from elsewhere, just make two new tabs and paste the texts. Compare plugin will happily compare line by line.
On Linux I havent found something similar. The closes is Kate, but you still have to save tmp1.txt and tmp2.txt , and remove the clutter when finished.
Does anybody know a compare app that just lets you paste two text blocks without saving files first?
meld allows you to start an empty comparison and to paste content into it without saving.
I already use Meld, yet somehow it never occurred to me to press that button xD Thanks!
meld is pretty cool, yes.
diff(1)
Edit: oh I’m not sure you can paste two things into the terminal like that. Maybe kdiff3. If I’m really lazy I use this online one: https://editor.mergely.com/
diff <<EOF pastestuffhere EOFwhile this is running, paste the other stuff into terminal. I’m assuming diff reads stdin, if not given a filename.
I quickly wrote a script that uses
kdialogfrom KDE to input text in a box, then writes both files to a temporary file, compares withdiffand outputs the difference in a text box again. At the end it deletes the temporary files (if they are not deleted, they will be removed automatically with next system boot anyway). It’s a quick and dirty script.I call it
diffuse, for diff + use.#!/usr/bin/env bash title="Diff - Compare 2 Texts" output_size="720x720" file1="$(mktemp)" file2="$(mktemp)" file3="$(mktemp)" kdialog --title "${title} (input)" --textinputbox "Input Text 1" >> "${file1}" kdialog --title "${title} (input)" --textinputbox "Input Text 2" >> "${file2}" diff -- "${file1}" "${file2}" >> "${file3}" kdialog --title "${title} (diff)" --geometry "${output_size}" --textbox "${file3}" rm -- "${file1}" rm -- "${file2}" rm -- "${file3}"Edit: Forgot to mention the name of the script. Edit2: Totally wrong shebang line corrected.
That’s neat. I might just steal it (already using KDE)
You could save the output to bash vars instead of temp files and pass those in using
diff <( echo $str1 ) <( echo $str2 )I would want to avoid
echoand just write to output file directly.
For CLI, diff has already been mentioned; for a GUI application I’d recommend meld:
vim’s :diffthis
You could always run NP++ via WINE if you can’t find a native Linux solution that you like.
You’re not wrong, but… Yuck
I have no hangups about using Wine for games and Windows only special snowflake apps. But a text editor through wine on Linux just feels dirty xD
I didn’t say it was ideal, but if nothing else has the feature you want, it would work!
It’s not a very Linux-y answer, but VSC does allow you to compare 2 pages for differences. Those pages can be unsaved or saved files.
Thanks, I’ll add VSCode/ium to the arsenal. I tend underutilize VSCode since Kate usually does everything needed by a text editor without all the baggage.
