Ignore date and just compare size?

[jgbphilly]

Can you ignore the date and just compare size when doing a folder compare?
Thanks

[gwillem]

Yes, that's something that I'm also missing. An option to switch off the time comparision (so that I could compare to folder that were copied but have different timestamps).

[juergen]

This particular issue has been the deciding factor for my not purchasing UltraCompare on two separate occasions. In a large coding environment it is very common for programmers to pass around large chunks of code in zip files or tar balls without having their date information retained. When this happens, it makes your tool completely useless for determining which files within the code base have been changed.

It is also often the case that a programmer will just change a little bit of formatting in a lot of files without changing their content. This also changes their date without actually changing their significance. It's nice that the functionality allows you to ignore whitespace when you compare the files in a directory, but ignoring dates is CRITICAL.

[MDGColorado]

Agreed. I have about 300 files to compare today, most of which probably match except for the date stamp. I was hoping UltraCompare would be of some help in this batch file comparison, but no.

[deeptinker]

Am I missing something? I frequently use UC (3.50 now) to compare three different versions of the same code base. UC will for a give file name, UC will tell me that the files have identical content, even if they each have a different date stamp at the OS level. Do you have date stamps imbedded in the file itself?

Travis

[mark]

I too am suffering from this issue, I.e I wish to do a folder compare, but ignore the time differences.

Until this is included it will not fit my requirements.

Hoping you add this soon.

Many thanks

Mark

[thyarcher]

I'm using UltraCompare 4.20a, and managed to have it ignore the timestamps by opening Options/Configuration, and setting Compare/Folder/Compare Method to the Full setting. It may do more work if it actually does a byte comparison instead of a size, but it seemed to work well for my needs.

I hope it helped.

[thyarcher]

Well, I finally needed the folder compare over a slow network connection, and the full compare wasn't fast enough. So, here is an UltraEdit script that might be helpful if you just need the results of the compare. You perform the standard date/size directory comparison, do a File/Save Results to a file, load the file into UltraEdit or UEStudio, position the cursor on the first line of the "Diffs", and run the macro. The macro will search through the file and delete each line that has the identical file sizes. This will remove the extra entries that the un-matched dates produced. It is a little slow if you have a lot of "Diffs" scattered throughout the file, but it works. Some caveats, the script switches to clipboard 1 so that you can use the Windows clipboard while it is running, so if you cancel the script you need to switch it back. Also, since it uses bookmarks, make sure that no bookmarks are toggled in the file prior to starting the script.

[edit] Updated the script to handle commas in the file size column.

Enjoy:

InsertMode
ColumnModeOff
HexOff
Clipboard 1
UnixReOn
ToggleBookmark
Loop
GotoLine 0 1
Find RegExp "^[^|]*\|[^|]*\| "
Find RegExp "[,\d]+"
Copy
GotoLine 0 1
UnixReOff
Find RegExp "| ^c ?+ | ^c "
UnixReOn
IfFound
DeleteLine
GotoBookMarkSelect 0
IfSel
GotoBookMark 0
Else
ToggleBookmark
EndIf
Else
GotoBookMark 0
ToggleBookmark
Find RegExp "^"
IfFound
ToggleBookmark
Else
ExitLoop
EndIf
EndIf
EndLoop
Clipboard 0

[zaagkon]

Although there is a script I'm still missing it in V5.00a Is it so difficult to make? WinNC seems to manage it but they don't have the filter options. I like to upgrade but not if this is not implemented.

[Mofi]

UltraCompare v5.10 has a setting to ignore timestamps on folder comparison.

[chuck_corley]

I has the "full" compare method checked on version 5.00 but it still didn't seem to be ignoring the dates (or had some other problem) and was telling me that identical files with different file dates were different. I just upgraded to version 5.10 today and that folder compare problem seems to have gone away.

Chuck

[bmac]

I'm using the latest and greatest version (v5.10) and I still can't get the app to ingore timestamps. I set the option to ignore timestamps, and when I run the folder compare, I still get the status column stating that "First - Older, Second - Newer" and nothing about "Content Identical". When I double click any of the identical files being compared, I bring up the text comparison and shows the files are identical. Is this a known problem with this version of the app?

[QuixoticPrime]

I have seen the same behavior when using the "full" compare option, bmac.

If you can stand the wait, I found that using the "smart" comparison with "text mode in result checked" returns only true differences in files. (As long as you have selected to view only differences in the menu.)

I still get the "first newer" messages rather than a normal "difference" message, but the only hits are for files that truly do have different content.

It would be nice if the "full" compare did the same thing, because it is significantly faster on my machine.

[Aqualung]

If there is something still not working report it by email to IDM support.

Installed the 5.10+3 hotfix, will be testing the "timestamp" issue soon. I am, nevertheless, still not getting right click UC menu options, though I'm sick and tired of reporting it. Whatever. (Am I the only one who's bothered by this? Am I the only Vista 64 Ultimate user on these boards? Any Vista 64 Ultimate user getting UC options in Explorer's right click menu?)