The Software IP Detective’s Handbook: Measurement, Comparison, and Infringement Detection

11. Implementation

Now that I have discussed the theory behind source code differentiation, I will discuss ways of practically and efficiently implementing that theory.¹ The particular implementation discussed in this chapter is based on the implementation used in the commercial CodeDiff tool that is a function of the CodeSuite program, available from S.A.F.E. Corporation.

11.1 Creating and Comparing Arrays

To implement source code differentiation, it is first necessary to put each line into an array. Source code differentiation is not programming-language-aware. In other words, all programming languages are treated identically. There is no discrimination between statements and comments. Multiple statements on a line separated, for example, by ...