Ediff and me
Yesterday I found that I needed to compare to XML files. Usually if the differences are few, just a simple diff on the command line will suffice for me. Ah, but this is XML — the start tags can be on the same line as the end tags or not, the content can be all one line or all on separate lines, etc. but the XML is still equivalent[1].
I had heard about Ediff but had never really used it. Since I already had the files in Emacs anyway, I did a M-x ediff, chose my two files, and suddenly I was there!
I won’t get too deep into the commands, etc., because you can read about them yourself. It took me a minute to find the command window, because it was small but just on top of the minibuffer. Using v and V, I was able to just focus on the differences and see which ones mattered and which ones didn’t. I didn’t do fancy stuff, like interactive patches, etc. But I got a lot done in a short amount of time — without having to leave my friendly neighborhood Emacs.
I just looked at the Ediff manual (see link above), but following looks more helpful:
[1] Well, at least for what I would be doing it would be!