Convert diff to markdown with strikeout?

Question

I\'d like to convert the output of diff (on a Markdown file) to Markdown with and tags, so that I can see what h

Answer 1

Use Markdown-Diff to have the word diff annotated to your original document. It formats wdiff or git --word-diff's output in Markdown, so you can use your favorite Markdown previewer or compiler to review changes. (Markdown-Diff was written by myself, inspired by Adam Rosenfield's answer.)

Answer 2

Use wdiff. It already does the word-by-word comparison you're looking for; converting its output to markdown should take just a few simple regular expressions.

For example:

$ cat foo
Why do we study programming languages?  Not in order to
$ cat bar
We study programming languages not in order to
$ wdiff foo bar
[-Why do we-]{+We+} study programming [-languages?  Not-] {+languages not+} in order to
$ wdiff foo bar | sed 's|\[-|<em>|g;s|-]|</em>|g;s|{+|<strike>|g;s|+}|</strike>|g'
<em>Why do we</em><strike>We</strike> study programming <em>languages?  Not</em> <strike>languages not</strike> in order to

Edit: Actually, wdiff has some options that make it even easier:

$ wdiff -w '<em>' -x '</em>' -y '<strike>' -z '</strike>' foo bar
<em>Why do we</em><strike>We</strike> study programming <em>languages?  Not</em> <strike>languages not</strike> in order to

Answer 3

You didnt specify the target platform, but assuming if you are using .NET you should definitely check out this article on CodeProject http://www.codeproject.com/KB/recipes/diffengine.aspx

The diff engine performs comparison and return you the logical object which can apply your own visual display formatting to it. I have used it in several projects one of which was a web based text comparison and we were able to introduced all those markup like you wanted above. I have also extend the engine with new classes to do custom line type comparisons.