Re: [PATCH 7/7] xdiff: make diff3 the default conflictStyle

Felipe Contreras [off-list ref] writes:

Johannes Sixt wrote:

quoted

then diff3 must display the conflict as

 12<ABC|34=AXC>56

to be technically correct. RCS style can coalesce A and C outside of the
conflict and display it as

 12A<B=X>C34

and *that* is the helpful part of this simpler style.

I have trouble translating the above to what I'm familiar with in my
mind, so...

diff2:

  1
  2
  A
  <<<<<<< l
  B
  =======
  X
  >>>>>>> r
  C
  5
  6

diff3:

  1
  2
  <<<<<<< l
  A
  B
  C
  ||||||| b
  3
  4
  =======
  A
  X
  C
  >>>>>>> r
  5
  6

I personally don't mind at all having a few extra lines in order to
visualize what actually happened.

Plus a good tool should have an option to quickly show a diff between any
2 of 3 parts, making analysis even simpler.

But of course there's zdiff3:

  1
  2
  A
  <<<<<<< l
  B
  ||||||| b
  3
  4
  =======
  X
  >>>>>>> r
  C
  5
  6

Which is the best of both worlds, even if not technically accurate.

Yeah, now I see, thank you both for explanations!

That said, to me it seems that for any of 3 formats one can find a case
where it's better than the other 2. I'm sure I got a few occasions where
leaving common part(s) out of conflicts resulted in a confusion and
mis-merge.

Thanks,
-- Sergey Organov