Opening and Saving Files

To open a file

In DeltaWalker you can open a file for comparison in one of several ways:

File Selector

File Selector image

  • Type a file path; auto-suggest and auto-complete will be there to assist you
  • Click the Open button Open button image to bring up Select File dialog
  • Click the Arrow button to select from history (dropdown) list*
Keyboard Shortcut Ctrl+O
Drag and Drop Drag a file from the file-system browser and drop it onto one of the file selectors or text editors

Any one of these ways will allow you to select either a local or a remote file. Remote files are identified by a Universal Resource Identifier (URI) and are typically located on a remote server accessible via one of the protocols supported by DeltaWalker—FTP, SFTP, HTTP, HTTPS, and WebDAV. In a sense, accessing a local file, or a file located on a mapped network drive, is a special case of accessing a remote file.

The URI specified in the file selector text entry has to be properly constructed, i.e. it has to have proper URI syntax. The Remote File Dialog can help you construct a valid URI more easily by allowing you to specify the different components of the URI and by putting them together for you in the end. Either way, the end-result is a string that DeltaWalker will use to locate and load the file of interest.

A new history item is added to history when at least one file has been successfully opened for comparison.

When opening files using either the Local or the Remote Select File dialog you can specify the character encoding and the line delimiter you want this file to be opened with.

Compressed files i.e. files containing other files in one of the supported compression formats—ZIP, JAR, EAR, TAR, GZIP and BZIP2—are opened and their contents visualized and compared. By definition compressed files contain hierarchical data, therefore DeltaWalker displays them as folders.

Selecting folders for comparison is similar, with two exceptions:

To save a file

File Selector

Pathname entry/selection field image

Click Save button Save button image to bring up Save File dialog
Keyboard Shortcut Ctrl+S

The discussion on opening local and remote files and folders applies to saving them as well. It's worth noting that protocols like HTTP and HTTPS in their standard form, while suitable for opening files are not suitable for saving files. Therefore they are excluded from the Remote Save File dialog. WebDav, a powerful HTTP(S)-based standard, is a notable exception in that it allows creating, updating, and deleting files.

The Save As Locally and Save As Remotely command allows you to save a file in a location independent of the location you opened it from. For instance you can open a local file and save it on a remote server and vice versa. In between, DeltaWalker allows you to visualize, compare, edit, and merge such files hiding all location details from you.

Supported compressed files are currently opened as read-only.

If you try to close a file comparison window with modified editors, DeltaWalker will display the Save Modified Files dialog and offer you the choice of saving the changes or not. Similarly, if you try to close the application window DeltaWalker will present you the choice of saving or discarding all editors with unsaved changes.

When saving files using the Save File dialog you can specify the character encoding and the line delimiter you want this file to be saved with.

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