Yet another comparison tool for checksum files... Compare two non-identical, or identical checksum files.
Two CSV files of checksums are required for this comparison to work, on the comparison that you put crap in, you get crap out.
Feed it two 'similar' files, and you should get a sensible comparison. Two lists of the form below should return a result of identical.
e0861941c1ac038836097a8f2a3e729482fe1acd,Files/speech.doc
318e91cdfca61d11a250a907bad6fd039c91b5d0,Files/revised DRAFT.doc
203a7c3aebf65f93552774accd7fa268a587667b,Files/2006-07.dot
0bc546eafd5d12b16c4d2ff27ff3bb7789adef26,Files/Barnet.doc
Part of the principle of keeping this tool so simple, is that, using tools like SHA1DEEP, it is easy to pre-condition the shape of a checksum file e.g. convert to Linux paths, where it isn't necessarily easy to compare dissimilar lists, that is, checksum lists from different points in time following disposal actions and pre-conditioning actions.
Tool should return simple output, identical, lists of differences, lists of similarities.
A benefit of the tool in its current format is that it works with checksums AND paths (actually, just two columns of stirngs really) increasing the granularity of the matches we discover.
That is what it does. More below.
###Unit Tests
One cannot emphasise enough the importance of unit tests in code for this purpose. Tests will continue to be added to this repository.
###Limitations
The tool can't handle a situation where the filename string has significantly changed (or paths). An potential (non Archives) example might be changing spaces for dashes in a filename, e.g. 'this is a file.txt' becomes 'this-is-a-file.txt'. The hope is that presenting the 'diff' list to end-users will help them understand and sign-off checksum integrity using their own heuristics.
###Example Use
> python checksumcomparator.py --check1 2015-01-26-e3-hashes-normalized.txt --check2 2015-05-18-checksums-sha1-normalized.txt --pre --v
usage: checksumcomparator.py [-h] [--check1 CHECK1] [--check2 CHECK2] [--pre]
[--v]
Compare two non-identical, or identical checksum files.
optional arguments:
-h, --help show this help message and exit
--check1 CHECK1 Checksum file one.
--check2 CHECK2 Checksum file two.
--pre Pre-conditioned objects. Objects minus file extensions.
--v Verbose: Output comparison list.
###License
Copyright (c) 2015 Ross Spencer
This software is provided 'as-is', without any express or implied warranty. In no event will the authors be held liable for any damages arising from the use of this software.
Permission is granted to anyone to use this software for any purpose, including commercial applications, and to alter it and redistribute it freely, subject to the following restrictions:
The origin of this software must not be misrepresented; you must not claim that you wrote the original software. If you use this software in a product, an acknowledgment in the product documentation would be appreciated but is not required.
Altered source versions must be plainly marked as such, and must not be misrepresented as being the original software.
This notice may not be removed or altered from any source distribution.