How to realize a diff function?

Question

How can I implement a diff function, such as Stack Overflow\'s question revision history?

Answer 1

I guess the only way would be to compare each character forming the 2 strings . Something like this :

void diff(String first,String second) {
   int biggest = (first.length() > second.length()) ? first.length() : second.length();
   for(int i = 0;i < biggest;i++) {
      //compare each char from the longest string with each char from the shorter
      // do something with them if they're not equal
   }
}

This is just a sketch of how I would do it . Everything depends on what you want to do with the data .