A file manager or file browser is a computer program that provides a user interface to manage files and folders. The most common operations performed on files or groups of files include creating, opening, renaming, copying, moving, deleting and searching for files, as well as modifying file attributes, properties and file permissions. Folders and files may be displayed in a hierarchical tree based on their directory structure.
In computing, the utility diff is a data comparison tool that computes and displays the differences between the contents of files. Unlike edit distance notions used for other purposes, diff is line-oriented rather than character-oriented, but it is like Levenshtein distance in that it tries to determine the smallest set of deletions and insertions to create one file from the other. The utility displays the changes in one of several standard formats, such that both humans or computers can parse the changes, and use them for patching.
gedit is a text editor designed for the GNOME desktop environment. It was GNOME's default text editor and part of the GNOME Core Applications until GNOME version 42 in March 2022, which changed the default text editor to GNOME Text Editor. Designed as a general-purpose text editor, gedit emphasizes simplicity and ease of use, with a clean and simple GUI, according to the philosophy of the GNOME project. It includes tools for editing source code and structured text such as markup languages.
The computer tool patch is a Unix program that updates text files according to instructions contained in a separate file, called a patch file. The patch file is a text file that consists of a list of differences and is produced by running the related diff program with the original and updated file as arguments. Updating files with patch is often referred to as applying the patch or simply patching the files.
Altap Salamander is a freeware orthodox file manager for Microsoft Windows, originally inspired by Norton Commander. In contrast to several other file managers, it has a context aware user interface hiding complexity – for instance, the bottom function list changes on press of modifier keys, just showing the currently available hotkey function set.
WinMerge is a free software tool for data comparison and merging of text-like files. It is useful for determining what has changed between versions, and then merging changes between versions.
File Manager is a file manager program bundled with releases of OS/2 and Microsoft Windows between 1988 and 2000. It is a single-instance graphical interface, replacing the command-line interface of MS-DOS to manage files and MS-DOS Executive file manager from previous Windows versions.
This article compares computer software tools that are used for accomplishing comparisons of files of various types. The file types addressed by individual file comparison apps varies but may include text, symbols, images, audio, or video. This category of software tool is often called "file comparison" or "diff tool", but those effectively are equivalent terms — where the term "diff" is more commonly associated with the Unix diff utility.
Editing documents, program code, or any data always risks introducing errors. Displaying the differences between two or more sets of data, file comparison tools can make computing simpler, and more efficient by focusing on new data and ignoring what did not change. Generically known as a diff after the Unix diff utility, there are a range of ways to compare data sources and display the results.
SlickEdit, previously known as Visual SlickEdit, is a cross-platform commercial source code editor, text editor, and Integrated Development Environment developed by SlickEdit, Inc. SlickEdit has integrated debuggers for GNU C/C++, Java, WinDbg, Clang C/C++ LLDB, Groovy, Google Go, Python, Perl, Ruby, Scala, PHP, Xcode, and Android JVM/NDK. SlickEdit includes features such as built-in "beautifiers" that can enhance code as you type, code navigation, context tagging, symbol references, third-party tool integration, DIFFZilla, syntax highlighting, and 15 emulations.
XYplorer is a file manager for Windows XP, Vista, 7, 8, 10, and 11. XYplorer is a hybrid file manager that combines features found in navigational and orthodox file managers. In addition to dual folder panes it features a file tree and a tabbed interface supporting drag-and-drop between tabs and panes. The program used to be available as Pro and Free versions. The Free version is still available as a feature-limited freeware version. The "Pro" was then dropped and just known as "XYPlorer". The program is available in a fully featured trialware version.
SE-Explorer is a freeware portable file manager for Windows which can be used as alternative to Windows Explorer. It is sharply different from FAR Manager and Norton Commander because it is GUI-based application with tabbed interface which made it possible to manipulate more than one directory or file view at the time and it has both types of file managers: orthodox two-panelled manager with two file windows side by side and native explorer emulator.
JkDefrag is a free open-source disk defragmenting utility computer program for Windows. It was developed by Jeroen Kessels beginning in 2004 and was released under the GNU General Public License. Since version 4 of 2008, much changed from previous versions, JkDefrag was renamed MyDefrag by its developer; earlier JkDefrag versions continued to be available. MyDefrag, which was closed source freeware, was discontinued, with the last version being v4.3.1, file date 21 May 2010; for several years the MyDefrag website has been a redirect to the still-existing JkDefrag site, but links to downloadable JKdefrag files are dead. JkDefrag source code is still available from third-party websites
Compare++ is an auxiliary source code file comparison tool for Microsoft Windows that can structurally compare, merge, and synchronize text files or directories. It was developed by Coode Software.
Unity Version Control is a cross-platform commercial distributed version control tool developed by Códice Software for Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, and other operating systems. It includes a command-line tool, native GUIs, diff and merge tool and integration with a number of IDEs. It is a full version control stack not based on Git.
Meld is a visual diff and merge tool, targeted at developers. It allows users to compare two or three files or directories visually, color-coding the different lines.
Sublime Text is a text and source code editor featuring a minimal interface, syntax highlighting and code folding with native support for numerous programming and markup languages, search and replace with support for regular expressions, an integrated terminal/console window, and customizable themes. Available for Windows, macOS, and Linux, its functionality can be expanded with plugins written in Python. Community-contributed plugins can be downloaded and installed via a built-in Package Control system, or written by the user via a Python API. Sublime Text is proprietary software, but can be downloaded for free and used as an evaluation version with no time limit.
Diff-Text is a web-based software tool that identifies differences between two blocks of plain text. It operates on a closed-source model and offers a donation or pay-what-you-want payment option. To be compared, text is pasted directly into the web-page. Diff-Text was developed by DiffEngineX LLC and uses improved algorithms originally developed for the spreadsheet compare tool DiffEngineX. It allows the user to choose between comparing on the level of paragraphs, whole lines, words, or characters. If comparing whole lines, only the line that is not a part of the other block will be reported. Diff Text considers a paragraph to be any line ending with a Windows, Macintosh or Unix line terminator.
Guiffy SureMerge is a data comparison utility. In addition to comparing files, the program is capable of doing side-by-side comparison of directories and archives. The program is also capable of performing automatic 3-way file merges. It is available for Windows, Mac OS, Linux, and Unix operating systems.
Double Commander is a dual-pane file manager. It is a free and open-source software licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public License. It is designed to be operated by a keyboard, a mouse, or by both at the same time.
