initialise diff chapter

[hristog]

Summary:

• Initialises the diff chapter.
• Proposes an outline of the chapter.
• Discusses what's in scope (subject to time constraints, in terms of reader persona guidelines) and out of scope.

[hristog]

I'll use this PR to share some progress update as well.

I've completed end-to-end implementations, associated with the following increments (some of following bullet-points correspond to a single increment):

• Recursive LCS for identification of an arbitrary longest common sequence between two given sequences.
• Dynamic Programming LCS, with a table representation, allowing recovering all longest common sequences via backtracking.
• Heuristic for identifying a diff-friendly LCS solution (amongst multiple possible LCS solutions).
• Rudimentary formatting, which is relatively close to diff's Unified format.
• Parametrised filtering of diff results, so that it could facilitate different forms of diff formatting.
  • In this case, the implementation introduces one parameter corresponding to the maximum length of matches on either side, which should be displayed as a context in a diff solution.

Naturally flowing next steps:

• Formatting the output using common formats:
  • Normal format.
  • Unified format.
• A tiny refactoring, in order to enable the solution to work on generic sequences (i.e., lists of any type that supports equality).

[gvwilson]

I realize this is in progress, but may I merge what you have so that I have something when I start rearranging order?

[hristog]

My apologies, @gvwilson - it appears that I've misunderstood the purpose of the chapter sub-directories and the associated PR increments.

The initialisation of the sub-directory was in response to this comment from the associated issue:

👍 thank you - I'll mark this one down as yours. Can you please create a sub-directory under the project root called "diff" and put your work there along with an index.md file with point-form notes as you go along?

But I wasn't sure at what frequencies should we have expected the PR increments to be merged into the repository here. I confirm I've been writing the draft of my chapter (and complete code examples) in parallel (i.e., whilst waiting for this initialisation PR to be merged).

Should I seek to update this PR with my draft work, or should that be part of a separate PR? I confirm, either way, I'll be able to provide a much better idea about the content of the chapter this weekend.

Basically (and it seems - entirely caused by my misunderstanding), I was waiting for this PR to be merged in first, so that I could subsequently raise other PRs corresponding to draft version increments.

[gvwilson]

Hi @hristog - please don't apologize, we're making this up as we go along :-) I have one more week until I start a new job, and would like to tidy up what we have before then, so I've been firing off requests for merge more hastily than I should have. You've done everything right; I'll go ahead and merge this as it is and then we can see where we are. Apologies on my part for being confusing.

[hristog]

Understood, @gvwilson! Thank you once again for confirming!