Does a program exist for checking two similar directories for file differences?

Question

Is there a program to compare one folder and all subfolders to another folder and all subfolders for differences in the files contained therein (presence, absence of files, size and list of filenames)?

Example of usage: I have 100 DLL files from environment 1 and I want to check if any of them are different (in size and date modified) from the 100 DLL files in environment 2. So I copy and paste all the DLLs in environment 1 into directory A, and all the DLLs in environment 2 into directory B.

I then run my "directory comparison" program on directories A and B and find out that, aha, here is a list of 7 DLLs that have different modified dates and times between the two directories.

EDIT: OS is windows XP

Answer 1

Beyond Compare http://www.scootersoftware.com/

Answer 2

I'm pretty fond of DiffMerge.

Answer 3

The first I can think of is the diff tool that comes with any Unix-like system.

Answer 4

I prefer using Araxis Merge. It's a very useful tool for file and folder comparison and merging. The only disadvantage it has is that it's non-free.

Answer 5

Synchronize It is created to do exactly this.

http://www.grigsoft.com/wndsync.htm

Synchronize It! 3 details

1: File list displaying results of folders comparison.

2: Start dialog in simple form.

3: Start dialog can be different, if you need full power

It is made by grigsoft (they also make the excellent Compare It! diffing tool).

Answer 6

SyncToy does this as well, if you're looking for something free.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=c26efa36-98e0-4ee9-a7c5-98d0592d8c52&displaylang=en

Answer 7

Python has a nice file and directory comparison module: http://docs.python.org/library/filecmp.html

The program

import filecmp
filecmp.dircmp( 'a', 'b' ).report()

Will tell you a lot. You can then customize this to provide more or less information on the differences.

Answer 8

I like WinMerge, though I don't know how well it would perform with binary files like DLLs.