Data Differencing
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Data Differencing
In computer science and information theory, data differencing or differential compression is producing a technical description of the difference between two sets of data – a source and a target. Formally, a data differencing algorithm takes as input source data and target data, and produces difference data such that given the source data and the difference data, one can reconstruct the target data (" patching" the source with the difference to produce the target). Examples One of the best-known examples of data differencing is the diff utility, which produces line-by-line differences of text files (and in some implementations, binary files, thus being a general-purpose differencing tool). Differencing of general binary files goes under the rubric of delta encoding, with a widely used example being the algorithm used in rsync. A standardized generic differencing format is VCDIFF, implemented in such utilities as Xdelta version 3. A high-efficiency (small patch files) differenci ...
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Computer Science
Computer science is the study of computation, information, and automation. Computer science spans Theoretical computer science, theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, and information theory) to Applied science, applied disciplines (including the design and implementation of Computer architecture, hardware and Software engineering, software). Algorithms and data structures are central to computer science. The theory of computation concerns abstract models of computation and general classes of computational problem, problems that can be solved using them. The fields of cryptography and computer security involve studying the means for secure communication and preventing security vulnerabilities. Computer graphics (computer science), Computer graphics and computational geometry address the generation of images. Programming language theory considers different ways to describe computational processes, and database theory concerns the management of re ...
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Bzip2
bzip2 is a free and open-source file compression program that uses the Burrows–Wheeler algorithm. It only compresses single files and is not a file archiver. It relies on separate external utilities such as tar for tasks such as handling multiple files, and other tools for encryption, and archive splitting. bzip2 was initially released in 1996 by Julian Seward. It compresses most files more effectively than older LZW and Deflate compression algorithms but is slower. bzip2 is particularly efficient for text data, and decompression is relatively fast. The algorithm uses several layers of compression techniques, such as run-length encoding (RLE), Burrows–Wheeler transform (BWT), move-to-front transform (MTF), and Huffman coding. bzip2 compresses data in blocks between 100 and 900 kB and uses the Burrows–Wheeler transform to convert frequently recurring character sequences into strings of identical letters. The move-to-front transform and Huffman coding are then ...
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Entropy (information Theory)
In information theory, the entropy of a random variable quantifies the average level of uncertainty or information associated with the variable's potential states or possible outcomes. This measures the expected amount of information needed to describe the state of the variable, considering the distribution of probabilities across all potential states. Given a discrete random variable X, which may be any member x within the set \mathcal and is distributed according to p\colon \mathcal\to[0, 1], the entropy is \Eta(X) := -\sum_ p(x) \log p(x), where \Sigma denotes the sum over the variable's possible values. The choice of base for \log, the logarithm, varies for different applications. Base 2 gives the unit of bits (or "shannon (unit), shannons"), while base Euler's number, ''e'' gives "natural units" nat (unit), nat, and base 10 gives units of "dits", "bans", or "Hartley (unit), hartleys". An equivalent definition of entropy is the expected value of the self-information of a v ...
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John Wiley & Sons
John Wiley & Sons, Inc., commonly known as Wiley (), is an American Multinational corporation, multinational Publishing, publishing company that focuses on academic publishing and instructional materials. The company was founded in 1807 and produces books, Academic journal, journals, and encyclopedias, in print and electronically, as well as online products and services, training materials, and educational materials for undergraduate, graduate, and continuing education students. History The company was established in 1807 when Charles Wiley opened a print shop in Manhattan. The company was the publisher of 19th century American literary figures like James Fenimore Cooper, Washington Irving, Herman Melville, and Edgar Allan Poe, as well as of legal, religious, and other non-fiction titles. The firm took its current name in 1865. Wiley later shifted its focus to scientific, Technology, technical, and engineering subject areas, abandoning its literary interests. Wiley's son Joh ...
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Data Compression
In information theory, data compression, source coding, or bit-rate reduction is the process of encoding information using fewer bits than the original representation. Any particular compression is either lossy or lossless. Lossless compression reduces bits by identifying and eliminating statistical redundancy. No information is lost in lossless compression. Lossy compression reduces bits by removing unnecessary or less important information. Typically, a device that performs data compression is referred to as an encoder, and one that performs the reversal of the process (decompression) as a decoder. The process of reducing the size of a data file is often referred to as data compression. In the context of data transmission, it is called source coding: encoding is done at the source of the data before it is stored or transmitted. Source coding should not be confused with channel coding, for error detection and correction or line coding, the means for mapping data onto a sig ...
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Google Chrome
Google Chrome is a web browser developed by Google. It was first released in 2008 for Microsoft Windows, built with free software components from Apple WebKit and Mozilla Firefox. Versions were later released for Linux, macOS, iOS, iPadOS, and also for Android (operating system), Android, where it is the default browser. The browser is also the main component of ChromeOS, where it serves as the platform for web applications. Most of Chrome's source code comes from Google's free and open-source software project Chromium (web browser), Chromium, but Chrome is licensed as proprietary freeware. WebKit was the original Browser engine, rendering engine, but Google eventually Fork (software development), forked it to create the Blink (browser engine), Blink engine; all Chrome variants except iOS used Blink as of 2017. , StatCounter estimates that Chrome has a 65% worldwide usage share of web browsers, browser market share (after peaking at 72.38% in November 2018) on personal comput ...
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File Comparison
Editing documents, program code, or any data always risks introducing errors. Displaying the differences between two or more sets of data, file comparison tools can make computing simpler, and more efficient by focusing on new data and ignoring what did not change. Generically known as a diff after the Unix diff utility, there are a range of ways to compare data sources and display the results. Some widely used file comparison programs are diff, cmp, FileMerge, WinMerge, Beyond Compare, and File Compare. Because understanding changes is important to writers of code or documents, many text editors and word processors include the functionality necessary to see the changes between different versions of a file or document. Method types The most efficient method of finding differences depends on the source data, and the nature of the changes. One approach is to find the longest common subsequence between two files, then regard the non-common data as an insertion, or a delet ...
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Colin Percival
Colin A. Percival (born 1980) is a Canadian computer scientist and computer security researcher. He completed his undergraduate education at Simon Fraser University and a doctorate at the University of Oxford. While at university he joined the FreeBSD project, and achieved some notoriety for discovering a security weakness in Intel's hyper-threading technology. Besides his work in delta compression and the introduction of memory-hard functions, he is also known for developing the Tarsnap online backup service, which became his full-time job. Education Percival began taking mathematics courses at Simon Fraser University (SFU) at age 13, as a student at Burnaby Central Secondary School. He graduated from Burnaby Central and officially enrolled at SFU in 1998. At SFU he studied number theory under Peter Borwein, and competed in the William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition, placing in the top 15 in 1998 and as a Putnam Fellow (in the top six) in 1999. From 1998 to 2000 he ran t ...
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Xdelta
Xdelta is a command line tool for delta encoding, which stores or transmits the difference (deltas) between sequential data, instead of entire files. This is similar to diff and patch, except diff computes and shows the difference between two complete files, while patch is primarily designed for human-readable text files; Xdelta is designed for binary files and does not generate human readable output. Xdelta was first released sometime before October 12, 1997 by Joshua MacDonald, who currently maintains the program. The algorithm of xdelta1 was based on the algorithm of rsync, developed by Andrew Tridgell, though it uses a smaller block size. Xdelta version 3 is primarily designed to work with streams following the standardized VCDIFF format, and it realized the compatibility among other delta encoding software which supports the VCDIFF format. It runs on Unix-like operating systems and Microsoft Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, ...
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Information Theory
Information theory is the mathematical study of the quantification (science), quantification, Data storage, storage, and telecommunications, communication of information. The field was established and formalized by Claude Shannon in the 1940s, though early contributions were made in the 1920s through the works of Harry Nyquist and Ralph Hartley. It is at the intersection of electronic engineering, mathematics, statistics, computer science, Neuroscience, neurobiology, physics, and electrical engineering. A key measure in information theory is information entropy, entropy. Entropy quantifies the amount of uncertainty involved in the value of a random variable or the outcome of a random process. For example, identifying the outcome of a Fair coin, fair coin flip (which has two equally likely outcomes) provides less information (lower entropy, less uncertainty) than identifying the outcome from a roll of a dice, die (which has six equally likely outcomes). Some other important measu ...
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VCDIFF
VCDIFF is a format and an algorithm for delta encoding, described in IETF'RFC 3284 The algorithm is based on Jon Bentley and Douglas McIlroy's paper "Data Compression Using Long Common Strings" written in 1999. VCDIFF is used as one of the delta encoding algorithms in "Delta encoding in HTTP"RFC 3229 and was employed in Google's Shared Dictionary Compression Over HTTP technology, formerly used in their Chrome browser. Delta instructions VCDIFF has 3 delta instructions. ADD, COPY, and RUN. ADD adds a new sequence, COPY copies from an old sequence, and RUN adds repeated data. Implementations Free software implementations include xdelta (version 3) and open-vcdiff. * Google's Shared Dictionary Compression Over HTTP proposal uses this algorithm, and was included in the Google Chrome browser, up to version 58. * xdelta - A tool, which is an Open Source VCDIFF delta compression implementation google/open-vcdiff- Another Open Source VCDIFF delta compression implementation as part ovc ...
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Rsync
rsync (remote sync) is a utility for transferring and synchronizing files between a computer and a storage drive and across networked computers by comparing the modification times and sizes of files. It is commonly found on Unix-like operating systems and is under the GPL-3.0-or-later license. rsync is written in C as a single- threaded application. The rsync algorithm is a type of delta encoding, and is used for minimizing network usage. Zstandard, LZ4, or Zlib may be used for additional data compression, and SSH or stunnel can be used for security. rsync is typically used for synchronizing files and directories between two different systems. For example, if the command rsync local-file user@remote-host:remote-file is run, rsync will use SSH to connect as user to remote-host. Once connected, it will invoke the remote host's rsync and then the two programs will determine what parts of the local file need to be transferred so that the remote file matches the local one ...
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