On Sat, May 28, 2011 at 10:18 AM, Johan Corveleyn <jcor...@gmail.com> wrote:
[]
>
> Actually, about the theory behind the algorithm: I think it would be
> quite beneficial if lcs.c would contain more high level documentation
> about how the algorithm works, and why it works. Right now it only
> contains this reference to "the article", which is quite academic (not
> to mention that there is still quite some distance between the
> academic explanation, and the concrete way this is implemented;
> especially after your series of patches :-)). It makes it very hard
> for most developers to grok this piece of code (and I'm speaking for
> myself here :-)), a lot of effort is required just to go and look up
> the documentation/background etc...
>
> Would you be interested in adding some high-level documentation to
> lcs.c, explaining the algorithm at a high level, maybe with an
> example, ...? You seem to have quite a good grip on this matter.
>
> A high-level explanation, maybe combined with some technical comments
> here and there in the code to document specifics of the concrete
> implementation, would be highly beneficial IMHO to get more developers
> interested in libsvn_diff, and hence increasing the chances to get
> things reviewed and improved ...
>
> Cheers,
> --
> Johan
>
How's this?
[[[
/*
* Calculate the Longest Common Subsequence (LCS) between two datasources.
* This function is what makes the diff code tick.
*
* The LCS algorithm implemented here is based on the approach described
* by Sun Wu, Udi Manber and Gene Meyers in "An O(NP) Sequence Comparison
* Algorithm", but has been modified for better performance.
*
* Let M and N be the lengths (number of tokens) of the two sources
* ('files'). The goal is to reach the end of both sources (files) with the
* minimum number of insertions + deletions. Since there is a known length
* difference N-M between the files, that is equivalent to just the minimum
* number of deletions, or equivalently the minimum number of insertions.
* For symmetry, we use the lesser number - deletions if M<N, insertions if
* M>N.
*
* Let 'k' be the difference in remaining length between the files, i.e.
* if we're at the beginning of both files, k=N-M, whereas k=0 for the
* 'end state', at the end of both files. An insertion will increase k by
* one, while a deletion decreases k by one. If k<0, then insertions are
* 'free' - we need those to reach the end state k=0 anyway - but deletions
* are costly: Adding a deletion means that we will have to add an additional
* insertion later to reach the end state, so it doesn't matter if we count
* deletions or insertions. Similarly, deletions are free for k>0.
*
* Let a 'state' be a given position in each file {pos1, pos2}. An array
* 'fp' keeps track of the best possible state (largest values of
* {pos1, pos2}) that can be achieved for a given cost 'p' (# moves away
* from k=0), as well as a linked list of what matches were used to reach
* that state. For each new value of p, we find for each value of k the
* best achievable state for that k - either by doing a costly operation
* (deletion if k<0) from a state achieved at a lower p, or doing a free
* operation (insertion if k<0) from a state achieved at the same p -
* and in both cases advancing past any matching regions found. This is
* handled by running loops over k in order of descending absolute value.
*
* A recent improvement of the algorithm is to ignore tokens that are unique
* to one file or the other, as those are known from the start to be
* impossible to match.
*/
]]]
Morten
