Glossary

Base folder

The top-most folder on either side of the Folder Compare view.  Base folder names appear in the toolbar path edits above each pane of the comparison.

CRC

(Cyclic Redundancy Check) is a numeric representation of the contents of a file.  If the CRCs of two files are different, then the contents of those files must be different.  If the CRCs match, then it is quite likely that the contents match.

CSV

CSV (Comma Separated Values) is a common file format for representing row and column data.

File Format

Our term for the collection of settings that characterize a type of file.  For example, the Java Source file format describes the Java grammar for syntax highlighting and rules-based comparisons, and stores your tab stop preference for Java source.  File formats can also specify conversion routines to be run before and after comparisons.

Filter

A setting that limits what is displayed or processed, "filtering out" unneeded content.

Folder Viewer/Directory Viewer

The main window that compares folders side-by-side.

File Viewer

The secondary window that compares text files side-by-side.

Important text

Text that is important to the comparison.

Orphan

In a side-by-side comparison, an orphan is an item that is on one side and not the other.

Plug-in

Software accessory that can be 'plugged into' the program for more features.

Regular Expressions

Formulas for matching strings that follow a pattern.

Rules

Our term for the session settings that control how a comparison is performed.

Session

Our term for a comparison task, such as comparing folders or files.  Each session view is in its own top-level window, or tab on a window.

Skew tolerance

The number of lines BC will search forward and backward for a matching section.

Snapshot

A custom BC file that contains folder tree information.  Like a camera capturing reality at a moment in time, a snapshot file captures the state of a folder so that the user can compare it to the live folder at some later time, and find what has changed.

Thumbnail view

In file comparison windows, the (optional) panel on the left with the color-coded summary of differences.

Timestamp

A timestamp is a file or folder's last modified time.

Touch/Touching

The action of setting the timestamp of a file to a specific value.

Unimportant differences

Differences in text that are defined to be unimportant to the comparison.  They may include whitespace or character case differences, comments or line numbers.

Whitespace

The blank space at the beginning and end of lines and between words.  Whitespace is generally made up of any combination of the 'space' and 'tab' characters.

Zip archive/zip file

A set of files or folders, compressed into a single archive file.  There are different archive formats, but zip is the most common.  Beyond Compare supports several different archive formats.