Thanks for publishing your work. What do you think about having a mode (not default but available in F4) to print those bytes which have a printable ASCII character assigned as ASCII instead of the hex number? E.g.,

ff \n  a

instead of

ff 0a 61

where the leading space for a makes it clear that it is ASCII and not hex, and common escaped characters could also be shown as \n, \r, or \t etc.

> cargo install biodiff
error[E0658]: or-patterns syntax is experimental
   --> /home/c0d3/.cargo/registry/src/github.com-1ecc6299db9ec823/biodiff-0.2.1/src/drawer.rs:131:25
    |
131 |     if matches!(a, Some(b'!'..=b'~' | b' ' | b'\n' | b'\t' | b'\r')) {
    |                         ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
    |
    = note: see issue #54883 <https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/issues/54883> for more information

error[E0277]: `[(&str, usize); 7]` is not an iterator
   --> /home/c0d3/.cargo/registry/src/github.com-1ecc6299db9ec823/biodiff-0.2.1/src/dialog.rs:391:19
    |
391 |           .with_all([
    |  ___________________^
392 | |             ("Hex", 0usize),
393 | |             ("Binary", 1),
394 | |             ("Decimal", 2),
...   |
398 | |             ("Roman", 6),
399 | |         ])
    | |_________^ expected an implementor of trait `IntoIterator`
    |
    = note: the trait bound `[(&str, usize); 7]: IntoIterator` is not satisfied
    = note: required because of the requirements on the impl of `IntoIterator` for `[(&str, usize); 7]`
help: consider borrowing here
    |
391 |         .with_all(&[
392 |             ("Hex", 0usize),
393 |             ("Binary", 1),
394 |             ("Decimal", 2),
395 |             ("Octal", 3),
396 |             ("Hex/Ascii Mixed", 4),
  ...

error[E0277]: `[(&str, {integer}); 2]` is not an iterator
   --> /home/c0d3/.cargo/registry/src/github.com-1ecc6299db9ec823/biodiff-0.2.1/src/dialog.rs:451:35
    |
451 |                         .with_all([("Algorithm", 0), ("Display Style", 1)])
    |                                   ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
    |                                   |
    |                                   expected an implementor of trait `IntoIterator`
    |                                   help: consider borrowing here: `&[("Algorithm", 0), ("Display Style", 1)]`
    |
    = note: the trait bound `[(&str, {integer}); 2]: IntoIterator` is not satisfied
    = note: required because of the requirements on the impl of `IntoIterator` for `[(&str, {integer}); 2]`

error[E0658]: use of unstable library feature 'assoc_char_funcs': recently added
  --> /home/c0d3/.cargo/registry/src/github.com-1ecc6299db9ec823/biodiff-0.2.1/src/drawer.rs:63:32
   |
63 |             let braille_char = char::from_u32(0x2800u32 + reordered_byte as u32)
   |                                ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
   |
   = note: see issue #71763 <https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/issues/71763> for more information

error[E0658]: use of unstable library feature 'assoc_char_funcs': recently added
  --> /home/c0d3/.cargo/registry/src/github.com-1ecc6299db9ec823/biodiff-0.2.1/src/drawer.rs:73:49
   |
73 |         Some(c @ b'!'..=b'~') => format!("{} ", char::from_u32(c as u32 + 0xFF00 - 0x20).unwrap()),
   |                                                 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
   |
   = note: see issue #71763 <https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/issues/71763> for more information

error: aborting due to 5 previous errors

Some errors have detailed explanations: E0277, E0658.
For more information about an error, try `rustc --explain E0277`.
error: failed to compile `biodiff v0.2.1`, intermediate artifacts can be found at `/tmp/cargo-install9qq2oD`

Caused by:
  could not compile `biodiff`

To learn more, run the command again with --verbose.

With this environment variable, biodiff can be used as a fully portable application from e.g. a USB flash drive, by creating a launcher script that sets the environment variable.

Environment variable works better than a CLI option, because it automatically propagates through git-biodiff, git and other possible wrapper commands.

On Mac specifically the F keys are often captured by the OS for specific purposes such as Mission Control. I currently have them bound to F1: change desktop left, F2: change desktop right, F3: show all windows. So to use biodiff right now I need to change my keyboard settings and then change them back after.

It would be nice to have some alternate shortcuts that are less likely to be clobbered by OS settings. (Though it's not too hard to toggle the F3 shortcut in the OS settings).

Thanks!

biodiff is very cool and really helpful for finding the differences. Bioinformatics algorithms are perfect for this sort of thing.

When a git-biodiff executable is in the PATH, the user can run git biodiff instead of git diff.

The git-biodiff executable needs to run git difftool --no-prompt --extcmd=biodiff and pass all parameters along.

You can try this now by creating a git-biodiff bash script in your PATH:

#!/bin/sh
git difftool --no-prompt --extcmd=biodiff "$@"

For cargo install to set this up it would need to be implemented in Rust instead of bash and multiple binaries be defined in the Cargo.toml via [[bin]]. Edit: Wasn't even necessary with the autobin feature which is default in edition 2018.

To use biodiff as diff tool in git, the user may either run git difftool --no-prompt --extcmd=biodiff ... or, if a git-biodiff executable exists in the PATH, the user may run git biodiff ... and the git-biodiff executable would run the first command. This handy shortcut mechanism is also provided by icdiff when installing it.

Define an additional Rust binary to be installed with cargo install which is easier than requiring the user to copy some bash script like #!/bin/sh git difftool --no-prompt --extcmd=biodiff "$@" to their PATH.

Fixes https://github.com/8051Enthusiast/biodiff/issues/2