What should semantic diffs highlight: The change or its effect?
Language aware diffs can detect changes in the semantics of the code that are invisible to traditional diffs. How should they be highlighted?
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The most obvious option: highlight what changed, the whole string. If you changed the string from interpolated to non-interpolated, the meaning of the whole string changed; it is no longer a method to concatenate variables, it has become a literal string.
Same for the example of single to double quotes. In some languages, double quotes are only used in specific contexts, so its use changes the meaning of the code. The post seems to dismiss this fact too easily.
The post chooses to use Python, where single and double quotes are equivalent and are not a semantic change. In other languages that might be, but that's not the point of the article. A semantic diff is language dependent.
Just because they are equivalent for the labguage does not mean they are interchangeable. I may choose to use single or double quotes in specific cases and need that change to be visible, even if the language rules say it is indifferent.
This is the obvious one: The way the string is written changes, but its content remains the same. There is nothing to highlight for SemanticDiff.
Moreover, my point was about how they phrase it. It seems they dismiss what the code means to developer by mentioning "content" and discarding "the way the string is written".
I may choose to use single or double quotes in specific cases and need that change to be visible, even if the language rules say it is indifferent
Then a semantic diff is not for you, just use the old method.
