ndiff feature request

[Willem Broekema]

The new 'ndiff.py' module (./tools/scripts/ndiff.py) contains among 
others this function "fcompare(f1name, f2name)" that opens two files 
given their names, readlines() them, and creates a 'diff' of the lists:

def fcompare(f1name, f2name):
     f1 = fopen(f1name)
     f2 = fopen(f2name)
     if not f1 or not f2:
         return 0

     a = f1.readlines(); f1.close()
     b = f2.readlines(); f2.close()

     cruncher = SequenceMatcher(IS_LINE_JUNK, a, b)
     for tag, alo, ahi, blo, bhi in cruncher.get_opcodes():
        ...

How about separating these two tasks, by creating a function, say, 
"lcompare(a,b)" that takes two lists as argument, and does the things 
from "cruncher = ..." onwards.  Then, fcompare could call that function 
after the files are opened and checked.

This would make other ways of diff-ing possible without having to write 
to a temporary file first. Things like diffing 
urllib.urlopen("http://someurl").readlines() with a cached list object, 
for example.

Or is there already an easy way to do this?


- Willem