I'm looking for a free library that can take two strings and produce a diff much like the diff's you see on edit revisions here on SO.
I'm hoping one exists, as this is a trivial part of an app I'm working on and I'd hate to waste time reinventing the wheel.
Any suggestions?
You can do an MD5 hash of both files to determine if they are identical. The SO-style revision history would be a bit more intensive.
Check out the source code for this diff tool, which might get you going in the right direction.
Surprisingly, i found one implementation which could give you the same functionality as SO edits. codeproject I am going to use it as well and hope this helps other people too.
I just released my DiffPlex project which does exactly what you ask.