🚀 improve diff -u comparison

[marcoieni]

I am comparing this project with diff-so-fancy with the diff -u usage.
I want to see the difference between two files named one and two:

As you can see diff-so-fancy highlights the different word on the first line.
Why delta doesn't do it?

[dandavison]

Hi @marcoieni, In the current version of delta, you can make it do it by bumping the max-line-distance parameter (see #140 for explanation):

I'm about to release a new version of delta which will highlight this by default (master branch):

Incidentally, in the new version you will be able to use delta one two as a wrapper for diff -u one two | delta:

[marcoieni]

Awesome, thanks!

[dandavison]

What #140 comes down to is that delta (unlike diff-highlight, diff-so-fancy, GitHub, GitLab, etc) does not assume that a pair of lines are homologous and should be highlighted as if one has evolved from the other. The reason for this is that delta (unlike the others), when confronted with a hunk containing different numbers of - and + lines, attempts to infer which lines "match" each other. So, it has to have a criterion. And the default value of the parameter defining that criterion was set a bit too conservatively in the released version. There's room for improvement/expansion of the options delta offers regarding edit inference algorithms. For example, the simple-minded algorithm implemented by diff-highlight (which diff-so-fancy uses as a library) could be added to delta.