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Is there an app to quickly compare two pasted texts? (reddthat.com)
submitted 7 months ago by to c/linux@programming.dev
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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?

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[–] 4 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (3 children)

I quickly wrote a script that uses kdialog from KDE to input text in a box, then writes both files to a temporary file, compares with diff and 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.

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