Subject: 23.3; ediff can't ignore whitespace regarding tabs vs spaces
Date: Tue, 17 Mar 2015 14:20:58 -0600
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I was working on a major merge (of two versions of a file) using ediff (the file that was giving me
trouble was about 10k lines long). I was getting HUGE diference regions
and also it was strange that I had varying regions between the files
where I didn't discern any difference in the text. This was after
enabling (with ##) the option to ignore differences in whitespace.
After I reset the tabs in both files (by reindenting the entire files
with emacs), things went much better and I was able to get through the
merge process.
I can provide you with copies of the files -- they do happen to be open
In GNU Emacs 23.3.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu, GTK+ Version 2.24.10)
of 2013-05-16 on panlong, modified by Debian
Windowing system distributor `The X.Org Foundation', version 11.0.11600000
configured using `configure '--build' 'x86_64-linux-gnu' '--build' 'x86_64-linux-gnu' '--prefix=/usr' '--sharedstatedir=/var/lib' '--libexecdir=/usr/lib' '--localstatedir=/var/lib' '--infodir=/usr/share/info' '--mandir=/usr/share/man' '--with-pop=yes' '--enable-locallisppath=/etc/emacs23:/etc/emacs:/usr/local/share/emacs/23.3/site-lisp:/usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp:/usr/share/emacs/23.3/site-lisp:/usr/share/emacs/site-lisp:/usr/share/emacs/23.3/leim' '--with-crt-dir=/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu' '--with-x=yes' '--with-x-toolkit=gtk' '--with-toolkit-scroll-bars' 'build_alias=x86_64-linux-gnu' 'CFLAGS=-DDEBIAN -g -O2' 'LDFLAGS=-g' 'CPPFLAGS=-D_FORTIFY_SOURCE=2''
Important settings:
value of $LC_ALL: nil
value of $LC_COLLATE: nil
value of $LC_CTYPE: nil
value of $LC_MESSAGES: nil
value of $LC_MONETARY: nil
value of $LC_NUMERIC: nil
value of $LC_TIME: nil
value of $LANG: en_US.UTF-8
value of $XMODIFIERS: nil
locale-coding-system: utf-8-unix
default enable-multibyte-characters: t
Major mode: Fundamental
Minor modes in effect:
tooltip-mode: t
mouse-wheel-mode: t
tool-bar-mode: t
menu-bar-mode: t
file-name-shadow-mode: t
global-font-lock-mode: t
blink-cursor-mode: t
auto-encryption-mode: t
auto-compression-mode: t
line-number-mode: t
transient-mark-mode: t
Recent input:
<help-echo> <down-mouse-1> <mouse-movement> <mouse-movement>
<mouse-1> M-x e m a c s SPC - r e <tab> <backspace>
<backspace> <backspace> <tab> r e <tab> <backspace>
<backspace> <backspace> <backspace> <backspace> <backspace>
<backspace> <backspace> r e p o r t <tab> <return>
Recent messages:
Loading /etc/emacs/site-start.d/50dictionaries-common.el (source)...done
Loading /etc/emacs/site-start.d/50erlang-mode.el (source)...done
Loading /etc/emacs/site-start.d/50ocaml-mode.el (source)...done
Loading /etc/emacs/site-start.d/50psvn.el (source)...done
Loading /etc/emacs/site-start.d/50scala-mode-el.el (source)...
Loading scala-mode-auto...done
Loading /etc/emacs/site-start.d/50scala-mode-el.el (source)...done
Loading /etc/emacs/site-start.d/51tuareg-mode.el (source)...done
For information about GNU Emacs and the GNU system, type C-h C-a.
Making completion list...
Load-path shadows:
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/usr/share/emacs/23.3/site-lisp/auctex/multi-prompt hides /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/auctex/multi-prompt
/usr/share/emacs/23.3/site-lisp/auctex/tex-mik hides /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/auctex/tex-mik
/usr/share/emacs/23.3/site-lisp/auctex/tex-info hides /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/auctex/tex-info
/usr/share/emacs/23.3/site-lisp/auctex/context hides /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/auctex/context
/usr/share/emacs/23.3/site-lisp/auctex/tex hides /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/auctex/tex
/usr/share/emacs/23.3/site-lisp/auctex/tex-jp hides /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/auctex/tex-jp
/usr/share/emacs/23.3/site-lisp/auctex/tex-style hides /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/auctex/tex-style
/usr/share/emacs/23.3/site-lisp/auctex/toolbar-x hides /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/auctex/toolbar-x
/usr/share/emacs/23.3/site-lisp/auctex/context-nl hides /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/auctex/context-nl
/usr/share/emacs/23.3/site-lisp/auctex/tex-fold hides /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/auctex/tex-fold
/usr/share/emacs/23.3/site-lisp/auctex/bib-cite hides /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/auctex/bib-cite
/usr/share/emacs/23.3/site-lisp/auctex/texmathp hides /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/auctex/texmathp
/usr/share/emacs/23.3/site-lisp/auctex/tex-font hides /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/auctex/tex-font
/usr/share/emacs/23.3/site-lisp/auctex/tex-fptex hides /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/auctex/tex-fptex
/usr/share/emacs/23.3/site-lisp/auctex/tex-bar hides /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/auctex/tex-bar
/usr/share/emacs/23.3/site-lisp/auctex/latex hides /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/auctex/latex
/usr/share/emacs/23.3/site-lisp/auctex/context-en hides /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/auctex/context-en
/usr/share/emacs/23.3/site-lisp/debian-startup hides /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/debian-startup
/usr/share/emacs/23.3/site-lisp/cmake-data/cmake-mode hides /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/cmake-mode
/usr/share/emacs23/site-lisp/dictionaries-common/ispell hides /usr/share/emacs/23.3/lisp/textmodes/ispell
/usr/share/emacs23/site-lisp/dictionaries-common/flyspell hides /usr/share/emacs/23.3/lisp/textmodes/flyspell
Features:
(shadow sort mail-extr message sendmail regexp-opt ecomplete rfc822 mml
mml-sec password-cache mm-decode mm-bodies mm-encode mailcap mail-parse
rfc2231 rfc2047 rfc2045 qp ietf-drums mailabbrev nnheader gnus-util
netrc time-date mm-util mail-prsvr gmm-utils wid-edit mailheader canlock
sha1 hex-util hashcash mail-utils emacsbug help-mode easymenu view
warnings scala-mode-auto erlang-start preview-latex tex-site auto-loads
tooltip ediff-hook vc-hooks lisp-float-type mwheel x-win x-dnd
font-setting tool-bar dnd fontset image fringe lisp-mode register page
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font-lock syntax facemenu font-core frame cham georgian utf-8-lang
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greek romanian slovak czech european ethiopic indian cyrillic chinese
case-table epa-hook jka-cmpr-hook help simple abbrev loaddefs button
minibuffer faces cus-face files text-properties overlay md5 base64
format env code-pages mule custom widget hashtable-print-readable
backquote make-network-process dbusbind system-font-setting
font-render-setting gtk x-toolkit x multi-tty emacs)