How to compare 2 files fast using .NET?

Question

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?

Answer 1

If you only need to compare two files, I guess the fastest way would be (in C, I don't know if it's applicable to .NET)

1. open both files f1, f2
2. get the respective file length l1, l2
3. if l1 != l2 the files are different; stop
4. mmap() both files
5. use memcmp() on the mmap()ed files

OTOH, if you need to find if there are duplicate files in a set of N files, then the fastest way is undoubtedly using a hash to avoid N-way bit-by-bit comparisons.

Answer 2

Another improvement on large files with identical length, might be to not read the files sequentially, but rather compare more or less random blocks.

You can use multiple threads, starting on different positions in the file and comparing either forward or backwards.

This way you can detect changes at the middle/end of the file, faster than you would get there using a sequential approach.

Answer 3

The slowest possible method is to compare two files byte by byte. The fastest I've been able to come up with is a similar comparison, but instead of one byte at a time, you would use an array of bytes sized to Int64, and then compare the resulting numbers.

Here's what I came up with:

    const int BYTES_TO_READ = sizeof(Int64);

    static bool FilesAreEqual(FileInfo first, FileInfo second)
    {
        if (first.Length != second.Length)
            return false;

        if (string.Equals(first.FullName, second.FullName, StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase))
            return true;

        int iterations = (int)Math.Ceiling((double)first.Length / BYTES_TO_READ);

        using (FileStream fs1 = first.OpenRead())
        using (FileStream fs2 = second.OpenRead())
        {
            byte[] one = new byte[BYTES_TO_READ];
            byte[] two = new byte[BYTES_TO_READ];

            for (int i = 0; i < iterations; i++)
            {
                 fs1.Read(one, 0, BYTES_TO_READ);
                 fs2.Read(two, 0, BYTES_TO_READ);

                if (BitConverter.ToInt64(one,0) != BitConverter.ToInt64(two,0))
                    return false;
            }
        }

        return true;
    }

In my testing, I was able to see this outperform a straightforward ReadByte() scenario by almost 3:1. Averaged over 1000 runs, I got this method at 1063ms, and the method below (straightforward byte by byte comparison) at 3031ms. Hashing always came back sub-second at around an average of 865ms. This testing was with an ~100MB video file.

Here's the ReadByte and hashing methods I used, for comparison purposes:

    static bool FilesAreEqual_OneByte(FileInfo first, FileInfo second)
    {
        if (first.Length != second.Length)
            return false;

        if (string.Equals(first.FullName, second.FullName, StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase))
            return true;

        using (FileStream fs1 = first.OpenRead())
        using (FileStream fs2 = second.OpenRead())
        {
            for (int i = 0; i < first.Length; i++)
            {
                if (fs1.ReadByte() != fs2.ReadByte())
                    return false;
            }
        }

        return true;
    }

    static bool FilesAreEqual_Hash(FileInfo first, FileInfo second)
    {
        byte[] firstHash = MD5.Create().ComputeHash(first.OpenRead());
        byte[] secondHash = MD5.Create().ComputeHash(second.OpenRead());

        for (int i=0; i<firstHash.Length; i++)
        {
            if (firstHash[i] != secondHash[i])
                return false;
        }
        return true;
    }

Answer 4

Yet another answer, derived from @chsh. MD5 with usings and shortcuts for file same, file not exists and differing lengths:

/// <summary>
/// Performs an md5 on the content of both files and returns true if
/// they match
/// </summary>
/// <param name="file1">first file</param>
/// <param name="file2">second file</param>
/// <returns>true if the contents of the two files is the same, false otherwise</returns>
public static bool IsSameContent(string file1, string file2)
{
    if (file1 == file2)
        return true;

    FileInfo file1Info = new FileInfo(file1);
    FileInfo file2Info = new FileInfo(file2);

    if (!file1Info.Exists && !file2Info.Exists)
       return true;
    if (!file1Info.Exists && file2Info.Exists)
        return false;
    if (file1Info.Exists && !file2Info.Exists)
        return false;
    if (file1Info.Length != file2Info.Length)
        return false;

    using (FileStream file1Stream = file1Info.OpenRead())
    using (FileStream file2Stream = file2Info.OpenRead())
    { 
        byte[] firstHash = MD5.Create().ComputeHash(file1Stream);
        byte[] secondHash = MD5.Create().ComputeHash(file2Stream);
        for (int i = 0; i < firstHash.Length; i++)
        {
            if (i>=secondHash.Length||firstHash[i] != secondHash[i])
                return false;
        }
        return true;
    }
}

Answer 5

Something (hopefully) reasonably efficient:

public class FileCompare
{
    public static bool FilesEqual(string fileName1, string fileName2)
    {
        return FilesEqual(new FileInfo(fileName1), new FileInfo(fileName2));
    }

    /// <summary>
    /// 
    /// </summary>
    /// <param name="file1"></param>
    /// <param name="file2"></param>
    /// <param name="bufferSize">8kb seemed like a good default</param>
    /// <returns></returns>
    public static bool FilesEqual(FileInfo file1, FileInfo file2, int bufferSize = 8192)
    {
        if (!file1.Exists || !file2.Exists || file1.Length != file2.Length) return false;

        var buffer1 = new byte[bufferSize];
        var buffer2 = new byte[bufferSize];

        using (var stream1 = file1.Open(FileMode.Open, FileAccess.Read, FileShare.Read))
        {
            using (var stream2 = file2.Open(FileMode.Open, FileAccess.Read, FileShare.Read))
            {

                while (true)
                {
                    var bytesRead1 = stream1.Read(buffer1, 0, bufferSize);
                    var bytesRead2 = stream2.Read(buffer2, 0, bufferSize);

                    if (bytesRead1 != bytesRead2) return false;
                    if (bytesRead1 == 0) return true;
                    if (!ArraysEqual(buffer1, buffer2, bytesRead1)) return false;
                }
            }
        }
    }

    /// <summary>
    /// 
    /// </summary>
    /// <param name="array1"></param>
    /// <param name="array2"></param>
    /// <param name="bytesToCompare"> 0 means compare entire arrays</param>
    /// <returns></returns>
    public static bool ArraysEqual(byte[] array1, byte[] array2, int bytesToCompare = 0)
    {
        if (array1.Length != array2.Length) return false;

        var length = (bytesToCompare == 0) ? array1.Length : bytesToCompare;
        var tailIdx = length - length % sizeof(Int64);

        //check in 8 byte chunks
        for (var i = 0; i < tailIdx; i += sizeof(Int64))
        {
            if (BitConverter.ToInt64(array1, i) != BitConverter.ToInt64(array2, i)) return false;
        }

        //check the remainder of the array, always shorter than 8 bytes
        for (var i = tailIdx; i < length; i++)
        {
            if (array1[i] != array2[i]) return false;
        }

        return true;
    }
}

Answer 6

Edit: This method would not work for comparing binary files!

In .NET 4.0, the File class has the following two new methods:

public static IEnumerable<string> ReadLines(string path)
public static IEnumerable<string> ReadLines(string path, Encoding encoding)

Which means you could use:

bool same = File.ReadLines(path1).SequenceEqual(File.ReadLines(path2));