I need a binary comparison tool for Win/Linux

Question

First of all, I don't need a textual comparison so Beyond Compare doesn't do what I need.

I'm looking for a util that can report on the differences between two files, at the byte level. Bare minimum is the need to see the percentage change in the file, or a report on affected bytes/sectors.

Is there anything available to save me the trouble of doing this myself?

Answer 1

I guess it depends on what exactly is contained in the file, but here's a quick one:

hexdump file1 > file1.tmp
hexdump file2 > file2.tmp
diff file1.tmp file2.tmp

Since 16 bytes are typically reported on each line, this won't technically give you a count of the bytes changed, but will give you a rough idea where in the file changes have occurred.

Answer 2

I found VBinDiff. I haven't used it, but it probably does what you want.

Answer 3

There's Araxis Merge available for windows. Here's a page that describes their binary comparison feature.

Answer 4

UltraCompare is the best for binary comparison. It has a smart comparator that is really useful.

Answer 5

You can use xdelta. This is open source binary diff tool that you can use then to make binary patches, but I think it also gives the information about differences found.