13.2 Using the XmlDiff and XmlPatch Executables

The XmlDiff.exe executable is a thin wrapper around the XmlDiff class. It allows you to compute the differences between two XML files on disk and optionally place the resulting XDL Diffgram in a third file. The following list shows the command-line options to XmlDiff.exe:

/o

Ignore child order (XmlDiffOptions.IgnoreChildOrder)

/c

Ignore comments (XmlDiffOptions.IgnoreComments)

/p

Ignore processing instructions (XmlDiffOptions.IgnorePI)

/w

Ignore whitespace (XmlDiffOptions.IgnoreWhitespace)

/n

Ignore namespaces (XmlDiffOptions.IgnoreNamespaces)

/r

Ignore prefixes (XmlDiffOptions.IgnorePrefixes)

/x

Ignore XML declaration (XmlDiffOptions.IgnoreDecl)

/d

Ignore DTD (XmlDiffOptions.IgnoreDtd)

/f

The files contain XML fragments (XmlDiffOptions.IgnoreComments)

/t

Use fast algorithm (XmlDiffAlgorithm.Fast)

/z

Use precise algorithm (XmlDiffAlgorithm.Precise)

If no command-line options are given, the XmlDiffOptions.None and XmlDiffAlgorithm.Auto are assumed, and it is assumed that the files do not contain XML fragments.

Like XmlDiff.exe, XmlPatch.exe is a thin wrapper around the XmlPatch class. XmlPatch.exe allows you to patch an XML file with a given XDL Diffgram, and optionally place the resulting patched XML document in a new file on disk. Since any options used in the creation of the Diffgram are written to the xd:diffgram element's options and fragments attributes, there are no other command-line options to XmlPatch.exe.