superdiff

Are you working to eliminate similar/duplicate code from your files? Do you have a suspicion that chunks of code are copy-pasted, but are slightly different s.t. normal diff methods don't work? Are you tired of visually going through and inspecting your code for repeating chunks?

If so, this might be the tool for you!

Features

Finds duplicate code slices
Finds similar-enough code slices
JSON reporting for jq integeration
Fast enough (00:03:39 for a 17k LOC with block size 10 and Levenshtein threshold 10)
Can check for duplicate code across multiple files
Vim integration!

Limitations

Not instantaneous for large files
Single-threaded

Short examples

```console $ superdiff -l 1 -b 7 examples/really-bad-code.py === MATCH === File: examples/really-bad-code.py Lines: [5, 11] Size: 5 $ find src vim-superdiff -type f | superdiff -l 1 -b 7 === MATCH === File: src/types.rs Lines: [87, 185] Size: 7

=== MATCH === File: vim-superdiff/autoload/superdiff.vim Lines: [138, 154] Size: 7

=== MATCH === File: vim-superdiff/autoload/superdiff.vim Lines: [43, 86] Size: 7 ```

Usage

Say you have some file examples/really-bad-code.py that you want to inspect.

examples/really-bad-code.py

```python

!/usr/bin/env python

class SomeClass: def init(self): self.alpha = 12 self.beta = 14 self.gamma = 16 self.is_bad = True

def reset(self):
    self.alpha = 12
    self.beta = 14
    self.gamma = 16
    self.is_bad = True

def do_something(self):
    d = {}

    import random
    for i in range(20):
        if i % 3 == 0: continue
        d[i] = random.randrange(1, 1001)
        d[i ** 2] = d[i] ** 2
        d[d[i]] = i

def do_something_else(self):
    d = {}

    import random
    for i in range(21):
        if i % 3 == 1: continue
        d[i] = random.randrange(1, 1001)
        d[i ** 2] = d[i]
        d[d[i]] = i

inst = SomeClass() inst.reset() ```

You have a feeling that it might be bad, so you use the tool.

```console $ superdiff -b 4 examples/really-bad-code.py 1 file(s) ["examples/really-bad-code.py"] Verbosity (-v): true Comparison threshold (-t): 0 (Strict equality) Minimum length of first line before block consideration (-l): 1 Minimum length of block before consideration (-b): 4 Now comparing "examples/really-bad-code.py" ( 37/ 38)...done 1 out of 1 === MATCH === File: "examples/really-bad-code.py" Lines: [4, 10] Size: 5

A total of 1 unique match(es) were found in the 1 file(s). ```

Wow! That's pretty nice that you found that! But maybe there are places in the file that aren't exact copies, but are similar enough.

```console $ superdiff -b 4 -t 5 examples/really-bad-code.py 1 file(s) ["examples/really-bad-code.py"] Verbosity (-v): true Comparison threshold (-t): 5 (Levenshtein distance) Minimum length of first line before block consideration (-l): 1 Minimum length of block before consideration (-b): 4 Now comparing "examples/really-bad-code.py" ( 37/ 38)...done 1 out of 1 === MATCH === File: "examples/really-bad-code.py" Lines: [15, 25] Size: 10

=== MATCH === File: "examples/really-bad-code.py" Lines: [4, 10] Size: 5

A total of 2 unique match(es) were found in the 1 file(s). ```

Huh, apparently there is a duplicate function that are pretty similar! And now (assuming that the output of the function is pretty long and not laughably short), you want to know if line 30 is involved in duplicate code, so you do the following:

console $ superdiff --reporting-mode json -b 5 -t 5 examples/really-bad-code.py > output.json $ cat output.json | jq { "version": "2.0.2", "files": { "examples/really-bad-code.py": { "count_blocks": 4 } }, "matches": [ { "files": { "examples/really-bad-code.py": { "count_blocks": 2 } }, "blocks": { "examples/really-bad-code.py": [ { "starting_line": 5, "block_length": 5 }, { "starting_line": 11, "block_length": 5 } ] } }, { "files": { "examples/really-bad-code.py": { "count_blocks": 2 } }, "blocks": { "examples/really-bad-code.py": [ { "starting_line": 16, "block_length": 10 }, { "starting_line": 26, "block_length": 10 } ] } } ] } $ cat output.json | jq '.matches | map(select((.blocks."examples/really-bad-code.py" | any(.starting_line <= 30 and .starting_line + .block_length >= 30))))' [ { "files": { "examples/really-bad-code.py": { "count_blocks": 2 } }, "blocks": { "examples/really-bad-code.py": [ { "starting_line": 16, "block_length": 10 }, { "starting_line": 26, "block_length": 10 } ] } } ]

Note: If anyone finds a better way of making the jq query, please make a pull request and/or let me know.

Vim integration

It's kind of work-in-progress at the moment, but here's what we have:

Load JSON with :SDLoad (make sure you are in the same directory you ran superdiff)
Open a file to edit
Run :SDLocal to highlight matching blocks of code
Run :SDQuery on a matching block to find other blocks of similar code

Check the vimdocs for more options and commands.

Benchmark

These numbers are here to give a ballpark estimate of how long something would take given some files. It is not scientific. I simply appended time to the beginning and copied the real time.

The data used for this benchmark can be found in scripts/populate-data.sh.

Version | Test name | Params | Time ---|---|---|--- 2.0.3 | TerrariaClone | -b 5 -t 5 json | 40.284s 2.0.3 | TerrariaClone | -b 5 json | 0.489s

In the works

None at the moment.