[FIXED] How to compare 2 files fast using .NET?

Issue

Typical approaches recommend reading the binary via FileStream and comparing it byte-by-byte.

• Would a checksum comparison such as CRC be faster?
• Are there any .NET libraries that can generate a checksum for a file?

Solution

A checksum comparison will most likely be slower than a byte-by-byte comparison.

In order to generate a checksum, you'll need to load each byte of the file, and perform processing on it. You'll then have to do this on the second file. The processing will almost definitely be slower than the comparison check.

As for generating a checksum: You can do this easily with the cryptography classes. Here's a short example of generating an MD5 checksum with C#.

However, a checksum may be faster and make more sense if you can pre-compute the checksum of the "test" or "base" case. If you have an existing file, and you're checking to see if a new file is the same as the existing one, pre-computing the checksum on your "existing" file would mean only needing to do the DiskIO one time, on the new file. This would likely be faster than a byte-by-byte comparison.

Answered By - Reed Copsey

Answer Checked By - Gilberto Lyons (PHPFixing Admin)