[Info-vax] DCL DIFF algorithm

[Bob Koehler]

In article <ibave3$hfj$1 at news.eternal-september.org>, glen herrmannsfeldt <gah at ugcs.caltech.edu> writes:
> 
> The unix diff command uses the dynamic programming algorithms
> that originated for comparing protein sequences in biology.
[...]
> 
> I don't know why DCL would do it differently.  The algorithms
> were well known.  The main one is the Needleman-Wunsch algorithm,
> first published in 1970.  (That is, some years before VMS 1.0.)

   I don't know how good dynamic protein sequences are, but in
   the expereince of a great many users the VMS difference utility
   does a much better job at finding only the differences, even
   though the original lines may get widely scattered.