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BeyondCompare is a powerful tool that is widely used in software development organizations for code diffing and file comparison. Users …
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What is Beyond Compare?
Beyond Compare from Scooter Software headquartered in Madison is a utility for comparing different version of documents and seeing the differences. It also allows changes to be merged and synchronized.
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What is Beyond Compare?
Beyond Compare from Scooter Software headquartered in Madison is a utility for comparing different version of documents and seeing the differences. It also allows changes to be merged and synchronized.
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What is Beyond Compare?
Beyond Compare Technical Details
| Operating Systems | Unspecified |
|---|---|
| Mobile Application | No |
Frequently Asked Questions
Beyond Compare from Scooter Software headquartered in Madison is a utility for comparing different version of documents and seeing the differences. It also allows changes to be merged and synchronized.
Reviewers rate Support Rating highest, with a score of 9.2.
The most common users of Beyond Compare are from Mid-sized Companies (51-1,000 employees).
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TrustRadius Insights are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, 3rd-party data sources. Have feedback on this content? Let us know!
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BeyondCompare is a powerful tool that is widely used in software development organizations for code diffing and file comparison. Users rely on BeyondCompare to compare files and folders of any format, extension, or size quickly and easily. With its long-standing reputation and over 20 years of experience, it has become a trusted choice for developers.
BeyondCompare simplifies the process of locating misplaced files or documents and provides a side-by-side viewer/comparer that displays various conditions such as same, orphans, newer, missing, etc. This functionality is highly appreciated by users as it helps them identify differences and navigate directly to them.
The tool offers a wide range of choices, including information, location, duplicates, and newest. This versatility makes it suitable for various tasks such as comparing directories between development and production servers in web design and development projects. Additionally, users in web coding, data entry, and graphic design departments rely on BeyondCompare for comparing code, spreadsheets, and combining documents from multiple sources.
Furthermore, BeyondCompare serves as a reliable source code diff tool that eliminates manual work and reduces the risk of human error. It is often preferred over the default mergetool utility included with Git for handling difficult merges in the development team. The tool is also used for recursively comparing directory structures and merging differing files into a single file.
BeyondCompare's usefulness extends beyond software development. It is commonly employed for operational tasks like comparing various formats such as plain text, folders, and structured data. Users appreciate its ability to look at configurations, validate registry settings, determine differences between files of any type, troubleshoot web-based applications by comparing configuration files, compare SQL code and DDL, and perform data validation tasks.
Additionally, BeyondCompare offers the capability to compare image differences, making it a versatile tool for ensuring content and format consistency during code comparison or other scenarios where visual comparison is required.
Overall, BeyondCompare has established itself as an essential tool for developers and professionals in various disciplines, facilitating efficient file comparison and code review processes while minimizing errors and saving valuable time.
Folder diffing feature: Users have found the folder diffing feature in Beyond Compare to be extremely helpful, allowing them to easily see differences in deeply nested folder structures. Several reviewers specifically mentioned this as a standout feature of the software.
Flexible diffing rules: The flexibility of the diffing rules in Beyond Compare has been praised by users. They appreciate being able to set rules to include or exclude files, folders, and lines from their comparisons. This customization option has received positive feedback from multiple reviewers.
Quick and accurate identification of differences: Reviewers have mentioned that one of the strong points of Beyond Compare is its ability to quickly and accurately identify differences between files. This efficient comparison process has been appreciated by several users who value time-saving features in the software.
Syntax Highlighting Needs Improvement: Some users have expressed dissatisfaction with the syntax highlighting feature of the software, stating that it is basic and requires additional installation or customization. They mention that the lack of precision in rules, attributes, and names can be problematic.
Outdated User Interface: Several reviewers have mentioned their disappointment with the old-looking user interface of the software. They feel that a more modern interface would be preferred to enhance user experience.
Performance Issues with Large Files: Many users have reported that the software can be slow when comparing folders with many files or large file sizes. This has caused frustration for those working on projects involving extensive data analysis or development tasks.
Users have made several recommendations for Beyond Compare based on their experiences with the tool. The three most common recommendations are as follows:
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Many users recommend Beyond Compare for comparing and merging code, as well as validating code with earlier versions. They find it effective in identifying differences in code and believe it is worth the price.
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Another common recommendation is to use Beyond Compare for general file comparison needs. Users find it easy to learn and use, and they believe it surpasses other tools they have tried in terms of functionality.
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Users also suggest integrating Beyond Compare into version management tools and text editors. They find it beneficial in automating tasks and reducing manual work, making it a valuable tool for developers working with Microsoft Office tools.
Overall, users find Beyond Compare useful for a variety of comparison tasks, such as comparing files, folders, images, and plain text. They recommend trying out the free trial before purchasing and encourage comparing it against its competition to determine which tool best suits individual needs.
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(1-5 of 5)Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
Beyond Compare is a useful tool for operational tasks. We use it to compare various formats, include plain text, folders, and other structured data. It also works really great as a source code diff tool. Using it to compare eliminates manual work and reduces the risk of human error in long lists/data sets.
- Compares more than just text files.
- Extensive compare and merge functionality, eg. ability to adjust side-by-side lines.
- Can save common comparisons for re-use or sharing.
- No easy integration with IDEs.
- No syntax highlighting or other useful editing tools.
- Improved developer productivity both in development and operations.
- Allow us to reduce risk of bad data causing production issues.
I haven't run across a whole lot of products that offer just comparisons, besides the classic diff tool. Beyond Compare serves as a specialized tool that usually is part of other software, such as IDEs. It offers some great features of IDE-embedded diff tools. A small but incredibly useful feature is the ability to manually align the different lines. Even the best diff tools don't have the full context. Of course, BeyondCompare doesn't have the IDE functionality for code analysis or build tools included, so it becomes a trade-off.
June 01, 2019
A comparison tool that's truly beyond compare
I use BeyondCompare for a variety of tasks related to web design and development. I frequently use it to compare directories between our development and production web servers. It's also great for general purpose file comparisons, such as comparing a backup file or directory to the actual file or directory to determine if anything has changed. Overall, it's a great utility that any sysadmin, developer, or power user should have.
- Compare two files or directories and easily see what's the same or different between the two sources.
- Synchronize changes between two files or directories.
- Be able to ignore insignificant differences such as code comments, minor timestamp differences, or certain file types, such as temporary files.
- It could make it easier to compare more than two sources.
- It's made it quick and easy to compare and synchronize directories when restoring a backup or copying code from one environment to another one.
- There are times when it would be a painstaking task to manually compare or sync two different directories, but BeyondCompare made it a trivial task.
It's much easier to use than command-line tools like diff.
February 10, 2019
A System Administrator's "Must Have" Tool
I work in our QA department, and all of the Systems Administrators (Microsoft Windows) use BeyondCompare when troubleshooting configuration files for web-based applications. What are the differences between this configuration file and that one? Load both of them into BeyondCompare for text searching and - bingo! - any differences stand out like a sore thumb.
- Comparing two configuration text files side-by-side is a snap. BeyondCompare quickly and clearly shows each and every line of text that differs between the two. That makes it very easy to see, for example, if someone modified a config file, or if a URL is wrong, etc.
- When comparing two files that are lengthy, BeyondCompare has this wonderful feature that allows you to clear out all the clutter and see only the lines that differ. What a huge help!
- Need to compare the contents of one folder with the contents of another folder? Easy peasy! BeyondCompare to the rescue.
- If you want to merge the contents of two or more folders, again with BeyondCompare it is a snap. Drag-and-drop the folders into BeyondCompare and ba-da-bing you've solved your issue.
- Want to keep the contents between folders synchronized? What a headache to have to do that manually, and often only because we forget, "Oh. Yeah! I modified that file last week and forgot to synchronize it with my target folder." BeyondCompare to the rescue. Folder sync is also a snap.
- Want to merge the text content of two or more files? Good luck with doing that manually. Use BeyondCompare!
- There are several operations that one can do with BeyondCompare, but the icons for them are all on one line, so you have to scroll (using a> on the sides of the screen) to see the next six options. It would be nicer if one could have them in a grid and move them around so they're in the order you want.
- I'm not a big fan of the "Auto-saved" sessions feature because I don't generally keep coming back to the same files. I'm all over the network looking at configuration files and those that I place temporarily on my desktop. At least they created a relatively simple right-click, clear contents option so I can get rid of the session's clutter.
- I would especially like to have an ability to have BeyondCompare open on one monitor and have it interact with content in a remote desktop session that is open on a second monitor, like being able to drag and drop content from the RDP session to BeyondCompare would be amazing.
- ROI ($): I can't put a dollar value on this, but the amount of time invested in troubleshooting computer software/infrastructure issues -- which simply means how much is it costing per hour for a person to do that job (which means labor costs) has been absolutely HUGE. For example, pouring through a web.config file on one web server and trying to compare it with one from another server using Notebook or Notebook++ can be very time consuming (not to mention frustrating and energy draining), but with BeyondCompare, the time it takes to spot such differences is reduced to a couple of minutes -- and most of that is finding the two or more files to compare.
- Reduced troubleshooting time: troubleshooting complex web-based applications in a Windows environment across multiple infrastructures can be a real nightmare. BeyondCompare has made that aspect of my work significantly less painful and quicker to do. See the example above.
- Notepad++
Notepad++ is a step up from Microsoft's built-in notepad, but it doesn't even come close to comparing with BeyondCompare (pun intended). Notepad++ is better suited to working with a single text file and inserting line numbers for you. BeyondCompare goes far beyond that to help with comparisons of text, MP3 files, image files, registries, and directories. It also shines in aiding with merging the content of multiple text files or even directories. When I need to keep a directory synchronized with another, I go to BeyondCompare. Notepad++ doesn't even come close. Contrasting the two is truly a case of mixing apples and oranges... or maybe apples and raisins.
As far as I know, it is not used by whole department but rather some specific people all over the organisation. I know that BeyondCompare has a lot of functionnalities but the ones that I've used the most were script compare and folder compare. I have also used it some time ago in order to promote changes. The software makes it easy to identify differences and apply changes to either the base file or the compare file.
- The ability to compare whole directory structure is really nice and time saving. This allows to quickly identify at the file level what matches and what doesn't. You can then move into each file to see what is different.
- When comparing files, you can go through changes and for each of them decides if you want to apply a file's version of that different line to the other one. When promoting changes, this allows you to go through the changes one more time by promoting each "delta" one by one.
- Can connect to servers to compare remote files. This was a great benefit for us.
- It would be nice to compare more than 2 sources. Not a common problem but sometimes we can have several versions of a script and it would be nice to quickly get a report of which of these are identical.
- The ability to specify custom characters to ignore by folder/file could be helpful but I have to say that it is more a "nice to have" than an actual problem.
- The great benefit of this software is immediate as it allows users to spend a fraction of the time they used to for source code compare. The compare is quicker and exact (no human looking at files or comparing files one by one with possibility of missing one).
- In this case, if the person validating differences between files and folders is not using a compare software, the time saved will probably be around 80% minimum.
- Used by change management groups, this can also raise the security of the changes as the person promoting the change can validate in details what modification a specific change brings to a production application.
To the best of my knowledge, the only 2 alternatives tested were UltraCompare (UltraEdit) and WinMerge.
WinMerge is really appealing as it is open source and free. It does have most of the base functionalities of BeyondCompare.
When evaluated, it was set aside mostly because it is an open source solution and also because most of the people that needed such a functionality were more used to BeyondCompare. For base text file compare, WinMerge will work really well. One great strength of BeyondCompare is the type of file it can compare (pictures, MP3 tags, zip files, ...). Most people don't need to compare these types of files but if you do, WinMerge won't be able to help you.
As for UltraCompare, it never got any interest as we already have access to a limited but free version with UltraEdit. Also, it compares files and not directories (as far as I know).
WinMerge is really appealing as it is open source and free. It does have most of the base functionalities of BeyondCompare.
When evaluated, it was set aside mostly because it is an open source solution and also because most of the people that needed such a functionality were more used to BeyondCompare. For base text file compare, WinMerge will work really well. One great strength of BeyondCompare is the type of file it can compare (pictures, MP3 tags, zip files, ...). Most people don't need to compare these types of files but if you do, WinMerge won't be able to help you.
As for UltraCompare, it never got any interest as we already have access to a limited but free version with UltraEdit. Also, it compares files and not directories (as far as I know).
January 12, 2019
Comparing files and folders at its best
We are using BeyondCompare in the software development organization for file comparison. Often we have to compare files quickly and easily. These files can be not only source code, but other kinds of files, like xml, xsl, xls, even binaries. We have tools that process binary files required by the business and sometimes we need to compare them to debug some production issues.
- Finds and shows the differences between files quickly and accurately
- Allows you to update either file(merge) when the difference is found, just by clicking on the arrows
- Folder comparison is one of the most useful features for software developers
- The integration with the mouse right click menu is extremely helpful
- The User Interface could use a big uplift. It is old looking, people will prefer something more modern.
- A little slow when comparing folders that have many files or large file sizes
- Sometimes when the differences between files are caused by moving text, it is difficult for the tool to identify that, and it is a pain for the user to merge the files.
- As in most comparison tools, the alignment can cause some issues, by showing too many differences between files which are caused by the alignment.
- Decreased the time spent by software developers in finding issues with the wrong files checked in the file versioning tool
- Issues occurring in the production deployed applications are solved faster
- The source code branching has been made easier by having this tool to compare between them
- Notepad++
We had used many tools before buying Beyond Compare. The reason is that it has proven to be the best tool available for files and folder comparison and merging changes; it is quick and easy to use, supports almost all formats and it had a fast adoption by the software team.