Filtering file differences

[Neil Faiman]

Is there any way to do a “Find Differences” that disregards certain predictable and uninteresting differences?

My specific example is a folder comparison of two folders that contain “the same” HTML files, but that are at different depths in the web site folder hierarchy. Thus, all intra-site links in the files will contain additional “../”s in the deeper folder. For example, in the shallower directory:

<link rel="Stylesheet" href="../zba-5.9.css" type="text/css">

<script src="../collapsible_menu.js"></script>

And in the deeper directory:

<link rel="Stylesheet" href="../../zba-5.9.css" type="text/css">

<script src="../../collapsible_menu.js"></script>

If I there were a Find Difference option, “disregard all occurrences of a specified grep pattern when comparing the files”, then I could just ignore all occurrences of “../” in href elements.

Thanks,

Neil Faiman

[Greg Raven]

Have you considered using absolute links from the top level of your site?

[Greg Raven]

So, for example, your links would look more like:

<link rel="Stylesheet" href="/zba-5.9.css" type="text/css">

<script src="/collapsible_menu.js"></script>

or

<link rel="Stylesheet" href="/css/zba-5.9.css" type="text/css">

<script src="/js/collapsible_menu.js"></script>

On Friday, January 30, 2026 at 11:24:46 AM UTC-8 Neil Faiman wrote: