<html><head><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=us-ascii"></head><body style="overflow-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;"><div style="font-family: Menlo-Regular, monospace;">An interesting question is whether there exists a diff algorithm</div><div style="font-family: Menlo-Regular, monospace;">which *minimizes* data movement across the network. Assuming similar</div><div style="font-family: Menlo-Regular, monospace;">lengths, you can halve it by running the diff at one of the hosts</div><div style="font-family: Menlo-Regular, monospace;">but can one do better if the two files are fairly similar? Is this</div><div style="font-family: Menlo-Regular, monospace;">even a theoretical possibility? I don't see links to any such</div><div style="font-family: Menlo-Regular, monospace;">algorithm on wikipedia's diff page but I figured there might be</div><div style="font-family: Menlo-Regular, monospace;">someone on TUHS who may have speculated or know about this!</div><div style="font-family: Menlo-Regular, monospace;"><br></div><div style="font-family: Menlo-Regular, monospace;">Bakul</div></body></html>