Comparing two files c#

For example technique number 1 has the advantage of being very fast to execute, but then it is very unreliable because the chances of having files with the same size can be quite high.

Technique number 3 for example, is very accurate but can be slow for large files. There is no one comparison technique which is good for all situations, so I recommend using multiple techniques in sequence.

In this short series of articles, we are going to build an accurate file comparison tool which uses techniques 1 and 4 listed above. Then we are going to build another file comparison method which instead uses techniques 1 and 5 listed above. Then, finally, we will compare both file comparison techniques and select the better of the two. We are going to use technique number 1 both times because it executes fast and can easily catch files of different sizes, therefore it can filter out the majority of files when doing comparisons.

Only files which have an identical size will be compared using the slower more accurate techniques number 4 and 5. Since both comparison techniques will be comparing file sizes we can start off by coding a CompareFileSizes method. Before starting, we will be needing the System. IO namespace, so after you create a Windows Console Application from Visual Studio, add the namespace to the top of your main class file. The above CompareFileSizes method accepts two full file names as parameters.

The file name must include the full path to the file. These file names are being used by the FileInfo class which is returning meta data on our files.

Once we have created both FileInfo objects, we are then using the Length property, which gets the size in bytes of the current file, to compare both of the files together. If the lengths of the files are not identical, this means that they are definitely not equal. This CompareFileSizes method we just created is not very robust. For more information, visit the Microsoft Web sites System. IO Namespace. Skip to main content. This browser is no longer supported.

Download Microsoft Edge More info. Contents Exit focus mode. Add File. OpenRead "target1. OpenRead "target2. OpenRead "target3. Compare File. Create "result. Comparison Live Demos website. The live demo has the following benefits. Introduced from with the release of Microsoft Office , the structure of this new Document format was changed from plain binary to a combination of XML and binary files.

Docx files can be opened with Word and lateral versions but not with the earlier versions of MS Word which support DOC file extensions. Multi format documents and images comparison API for. Analyse the differences between documents of the same format without using any external tool. Download Free Trial.