An Online Tool to do a 'quick and dirty' diff of two text or code fragments

Introduction - why use an online diff?

In my course as a developer I find myself constantly examining the differences between two pieces of text.

Now, although pretty much every IDE (and various stand-alone products) have sophisticated diff utilities built in (like Eclipse), my favourite, I got very tired of having to create two files just to paste in fragments of code or other bits of texts just in order to perform a diff and see the differences highlighted.

This is why I made myself a quick online version that I have now decided to share with anyone else interested. Of course, it also means I can access it from anywhere I want now.....

Click here for instructions

Simply paste your first text into the left text box and the other text into the right box and hit 'Submit' to see the results.

I have added the following options :

Trim Lines
Trims empty spaces on the beginning and end of each line on both inputs prior to comparing
Remove Empty Lines
Removes empty lines on both inputs prior to comparing
Remove excess Whitespace
Removes any instances of two or more subsequent whitespaces and replaces it with a single one

I have also added the following options for diff algorithms:

Side-by-side
Shows the differences side by side
Inline
Shows the differences inline, using the Pear Diff Class

For long comparisons to avoid scrolling all the way up to do a follow-up comparison, I have also included a copy of the form on the bottom of the page after a submit has taken place.

Diff Method: