difflib.ndiff()¶

difflib.ndiff(a, b, linejunk=None, charjunk=<function IS_CHARACTER_JUNK>)[source]¶

Compare a and b (lists of strings); return a Differ-style delta.

Optional keyword parameters linejunk and charjunk are for filter functions (or None):

• linejunk: A function that should accept a single string argument, and return true iff the string is junk. The default is None, and is recommended; as of Python 2.3, an adaptive notion of “noise” lines is used that does a good job on its own.
• charjunk: A function that should accept a string of length 1. The default is module-level function IS_CHARACTER_JUNK, which filters out whitespace characters (a blank or tab; note: bad idea to include newline in this!).

Tools/scripts/ndiff.py is a command-line front-end to this function.

Example:

>>> diff = ndiff('one\ntwo\nthree\n'.splitlines(1),
...              'ore\ntree\nemu\n'.splitlines(1))
>>> print ''.join(diff),
- one
?  ^
+ ore
?  ^
- two
- three
?  -
+ tree
+ emu