How to make Beyond Compare ignore whitespace, but still show changes in comments

Question

Beyond Compare has a button and menu item Ignore Unimportant Differences. When selected the diff will ignore whitespace and various formatting differences, but will also ignore changes in comments. How can I make it show comment changes, but still ignore whitespace?

score 33 · Accepted Answer · edited May 07 '19 at 16:25

33

Use the Session → Session Settings menu item.
Go to the Importance tab.
In the list box on the top left, check Comments.
In the drop-down at the bottom left, choose Also update session defaults. (if you want to change it permanently)
Click OK.
Verify that View → Ignore Unimportant Differences is enabled.

edited May 07 '19 at 16:25

J. Chris Compton

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answered Jul 11 '13 at 13:30

Tor Klingberg

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4

Do you know how to get it to ignore white space for folder compare? – niken Aug 02 '17 at 15:50
3

"Ignore Unimportant Differences" - where is this? Can't see it in BC 3 – Martin Capodici Nov 06 '17 at 03:19
2

"Ignore Unimportant Differences" is in the View menu. – jciloa Mar 19 '19 at 07:51
i cant fine "comments". May be i have newer BeyondCompare. I found "leading white spaces in the lower menu" though – M. Usman Khan Jan 21 '20 at 09:27
@M.UsmanKhan It will be in the grammar elements box once you choose a source type on the Format tab for the Left and Right. – Brian Apr 16 '20 at 19:52

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 30 '18 at 20:03

For AutoHotKey users, here is a hotkey script to do this with a single hotkey which toggles comments between unimportant and important.

#NoEnv  
SendMode Input
SetWorkingDir %A_ScriptDir%
#SingleInstance force

;Make hotkeys specific to BeyondCompare
#IfWinActive, ahk_exe BCompare.exe

;Hotkey here, Numpad5 is being used, could be anything
Numpad5::
send, !se{right}{right}{tab}{tab}{tab}{down}{down}{down}{down}{down}{space}{enter}
return

How to make Beyond Compare ignore whitespace, but still show changes in comments

2 Answers2