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).
