File-MultipleDiff The README is used to introduce the module and provide instructions on how to install the module, any machine dependencies it may have (for example C compilers and installed libraries) and any other information that should be provided before the module is installed. A README file is required for CPAN modules since CPAN extracts the README file from a module distribution so that people browsing the archive can use it to get an idea of the module's uses. It is usually a good idea to provide version information here so that people can decide whether fixes for the module are worth downloading. File::MultipleDiff compares many files with one another and creates a matrix, whose elements are amounts of differences between every paar of compared files. Example of comparison of files file1, file2, ... file5 --------------------------- | f f f f f | i i i i i | l l l l l | e e e e e | 1 2 3 4 5 --------------------------- file1 | 0 1 2 0 3 file2 | - 0 3 1 4 file3 | - - 0 2 5 file4 | - - - 0 3 file5 | - - - - 0 Here file1 is identical with file4, file2 has 4 differences from file5. In other words, this module makes vizualization of metric (quasimetric) or distance function for every pair of file group. Tasks for solution using this module are: - find out most or least matching files/sets to a reference file/set, - measure level of chaos in files/sets, that must be identical ("chaosmeter" mode), - find steps, that should be executed to unify not identical files/sets. Possible implementations are in areas, where many files/sets should be compared with one another, e.g. - administration of many computers or databases, - biology, genetics (mutations analysis), - criminalistics (fingerprint, face recognition) - marriage agency (search matching pairs), - lingvistics, ... Amounts of differences are stated by the module Algorithm::Diff. As a cosmetic sugar this matrix might be highlighted using colours for terminals, that support ANSI escape sequences. INSTALLATION Required following non core Perl modules: Algorithm::Diff Term::ANSIColor To install this module, run the following commands: perl Makefile.PL make make test make install SUPPORT AND DOCUMENTATION After installing, you can find documentation for this module with the perldoc command. perldoc File::MultipleDiff You can also look for information at: RT, CPAN's request tracker (report bugs here) http://rt.cpan.org/NoAuth/Bugs.html?Dist=File-MultipleDiff AnnoCPAN, Annotated CPAN documentation http://annocpan.org/dist/File-MultipleDiff CPAN Ratings http://cpanratings.perl.org/d/File-MultipleDiff Search CPAN http://search.cpan.org/dist/File-MultipleDiff/ LICENSE AND COPYRIGHT Copyright (C) 2013 Mart E. Rivilis This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the the Artistic License (2.0).