I'm looking for text comparison software, any ideas?

[Robb]

Here's what I'm looking to git done. :D

I'd like to compare one letter to a number of letters, to see if there are similarities in words and phrases, to determine if the first letter was written by any of the authors of the other stack of letters. :crazy:

Anyone understand what I'm after? Is there such a thing out there? :shrug:

[ZombieNixon]

1. Well, I could write a program like that,

so I'm sure there must be software like it out there. I'd be hugely suprised if there weren't.

Personally, I use CodeWarrior to do the same thing with lines of code (to check for errors in code I've stolen, not to check for authorship).

But there must be something. Have you Googled "text comparison?"

[Robb]

2. What the heck's "Google"?

:D

I looked, but all I'm coming across are programs, as you say, for code.

[ZombieNixon]

3. Google is a misspelling of "googol"

or 10^100. :silly:

Wow. If there isn't something out there already, I know what the next application I right is going to be. :o

[Robb]

4. I found one piece of shareware

called "Concorder Pro," which analyzes individual texts for recurring words and phrases. Just seems to be nothing out there that compares one to another. :shug:

[ZombieNixon]

5. Hmm...I have an idea so potentially

evil profitable my head would explode if I even began to understand what I was thinking. :evilgrin:

[Sgent]

6. search for plagiarism prevention software

there is software out there that universities use to compare student's work with what can be found online and with each others. W/O knowing exactly what you are trying to do, it may (or may not) work.

[no name no slogan]

7. One word: grep

It's a common *nix command that does exactly that. Unfortunately, it only runs on *nix systems.

However, you could probably run it under Cygwin, which is a bunch of utilities that let you run Unix-style commands on Windows boxen.

Google "Cygwin", and download it. Yes, it is free. :D