Re: Using "Compare to file..." to update source

Y'all

We have occasion to make the same changes to source members of the same name and purpose in different environments. Questions as to __why__ will be ignored, at least by this person!! :)

So I was looking for an effective way to do this in RDi - opt 55 in PDM is one thing I've found to be very powerful.

Most of the compare-merge utilities are, shall we say, too aggressive, make wholesale changes to change dates, etc.

So I found that I can use the "Compare to file..." function nicely for this - one gets to this either in the Edit menu or using the delta symbol on the toolbar of RDi.

Once you get the compare window up, you'll see differences with red and yellow lines - the red is in the source you are comparing to, the yellow is what you have in the source you had open.

In this case, the source you are comparing to is the one with the more recent changes, so you want to bring those into the source you are working in.

You can't, so far as I can tell, use the SEU techniques of CC block copy from the red lines. When I tried that, it copied a blank line or lines, not the content in red.

So I thought about the line-select feature, like this

- Alt-L on the first red line and again on the last red line
- Move cursor to the last yellow line
- Alt-C to copy the lines after the line where the cursor is
- Remove all the yellow lines, maybe with Ctrl-Backspace or the Alt-L stuff again
- Ctrl-Shift-R to refresh the compare - voilá - no difference now

One nice thing - all the source change dates are maintained of updated as they should be.

Now I don't know any other way to do this kind of thing from this compare. The other side-by-side compare ends up with new source change dates for the entire member, IIRC.

I might just submit an RFE to allow using the SEU codes to copy from the "red" stuff into the live source.

Thoughts are welcome, of course!

Regards
Vern