All language (COBOL first) - Smart source code comparison

[FALLAI-Denis]

Description of the enhancement requested

Hi,

VS Code offers a standard function for comparing two text files, so as far as we are concerned two program source files. This is a basic line-to-line and column-to-column comparison.

We would like to have a comparison function that is smarter for comparing program source files:

• limit the comparison to certain columns, for COBOL limit the comparison to columns 7 to 72 and ignore the contents of columns 1 to 6 and 73 to 80
• compare in a case-insensitive way: equivalence between lowercase and uppercase letters
• ignore differences in line-level formatting (spacing between words on the same line)
• ignore comment lines
• as far as possible identify the moved lines: similar lines or group of lines but positioned differently in the source code files.
• as far as possible, ignore some "well-known" differences

These functionalities are natively available on the z/OS system, either at the level of the ISREDIT editor with COMPARE function, or at the level of the SuperCE (ISRSUPC) which is part of the ISPF/PDF tools.

We lack these features in Z Open Editor.

If we can't do it natively in VS Code / Z Open Editor, develop a Z Open Editor function to call the ISPSUPC utility and display the result in a VS Code view:

• selection of "new" file and "old" file for comparison
• selection / entry of comparison options
• transfer "new" and "old" files to the remote system in a temporary environment
• execution of the ISRSUPC utility
• retrieve output listing from ISRSUPC
• clean the output listing of formatting (page break, page header, etc.)
• display of the result in a view of VS Code

ISREDIT COMPARE—Edit Compare

SuperC reference

How to directly invoke SuperC and search-for

The comparison listing

[FALLAI-Denis]

Hi,

I also open issue for:

• Zowe CLI: File compare - Remote comparison based on "Super Compare" utility: ISRSUPC

• Zowe Explorer: Add compare actions for USS files and Data Sets