philiprehberger-diff-strings

Show character-level differences between two strings with colored terminal output.

Installation

pip install philiprehberger-diff-strings

Usage

from philiprehberger_diff_strings import diff

print(diff("hello world", "hello there"))

Character-level diff

from philiprehberger_diff_strings import diff

# Colored output (default)
print(diff("the cat sat", "the bat sat"))

# Plain text output
print(diff("the cat sat", "the bat sat", color=False))

Programmatic diff

from philiprehberger_diff_strings import char_diff

changes = char_diff("abc", "adc")
# [Match(text='a'), Replace(old='b', new='d'), Match(text='c')]

Word-level diff

from philiprehberger_diff_strings import word_diff

print(word_diff("the quick brown fox", "the slow brown dog", color=False))

Line-level diff

from philiprehberger_diff_strings import line_diff

a = "line one\nline two\nline three"
b = "line one\nline 2\nline three"
print(line_diff(a, b, color=False))
# Shows unified-diff style output with +/- markers

# Control context lines shown around changes
print(line_diff(a, b, context=1))

Diff summary

from philiprehberger_diff_strings import diff_summary

summary = diff_summary("hello world", "hello there")
print(summary.additions)   # number of insertions
print(summary.deletions)   # number of deletions
print(summary.changes)     # number of replacements
print(summary.similarity)  # similarity ratio (0.0 to 1.0)

HTML diff

from philiprehberger_diff_strings import html_diff

result = html_diff("the cat", "the bat")
# 'the <del>c</del><ins>b</ins>at'

Markdown diff

For PR comments, issue bodies, or chat messages — render the diff using Markdown formatting (**bold** insertions, ~~strikethrough~~ deletions):

from philiprehberger_diff_strings import markdown_diff

print(markdown_diff("the cat sat", "the bat sat"))
# 'the ~~c~~**b**at sat'

Custom colors

from philiprehberger_diff_strings import diff, word_diff

# Use custom ANSI colors (red, green, yellow, blue, magenta, cyan)
print(diff("abc", "adc", insert_color="cyan", delete_color="magenta", replace_color="blue"))
print(word_diff("old text", "new text", insert_color="blue", replace_color="cyan"))

Patch (reconstruct from changes)

from philiprehberger_diff_strings import char_diff, patch

changes = char_diff("hello world", "hello there")
result = patch("hello world", changes)
assert result == "hello there"

Similarity ratio

from philiprehberger_diff_strings import similarity

score = similarity("hello", "hallo")  # 0.8

Test assertions

from philiprehberger_diff_strings import assert_strings_equal

assert_strings_equal("expected output", "expected output")  # passes
assert_strings_equal("expected", "actual")  # raises AssertionError with diff

API

Change types

DiffSummary

Development

pip install -e .
python -m pytest tests/ -v

Support

If you find this project useful:

⭐ Star the repo

🐛 Report issues

💡 Suggest features

❤️ Sponsor development

🌐 All Open Source Projects

💻 GitHub Profile

🔗 LinkedIn Profile

License

MIT