why the first byte is like that in Beyond Compare tool?
I have two binary files and suppose they should be the same but they are not. So I use binary diff tools to look at them. But two different tools, Beyond Compare and UltraCompare, give me different result in one file at the first byte.
I use HxD tool to verify the content and it seems the HxD supports UltraCompare.
Can anybody tell me what's that mean in Beyond Compare? Does this mean the Beyond Compare is not reliable in some cases?
In Beyond Compare spaces with the cross hatched ▨ background indicate missing (added or deleted) bytes. In your image the file on the left starts with an an 0x00 byte that the one on the right doesn't have. BC will show a gap in the file content to make the rest of the bytes line up visually. That's also indicated the hex addresses that are shown as "line numbers" being different on the two sides, and is the reason the rest of the file shows as black (exact matches). Gaps don't have any affect on the content of the files, it's just a method of presenting the alignment more clearly.
UltraCompare apparently isn't adjusting the alignment in this case, so every 0xC8 byte is lined up with a 0x00 one and vice versa, which is why the entire comparison is shown as a difference (red).
HxD is just showing a single file, not a comparison, so it doesn't need to use gaps to show the alignment. Whether UltraCompare is better or not depends on what you want the comparison to do. It is just comparing byte 1 to byte 1, byte 2 to byte 2, etc, while BC is aligning the files taking into account adds and deletes. In this case, it's showing that byte 1 on the left was added, so doesn't match anything on the right, and that byte 2 on the left is the same as byte 1 on the left, byte 3 on the left matches byte 2 on the right, etc.
If the binary data can have inserts and deletes (e.g., if it contains textual strings or variable length headers), then BC's approach is better because it avoids showing the entire file as different if one side just has an added byte (as in this case).
If the binary data is fixed size, for example a bitmap, then what UltraCompare is doing is better, since it's not adjusting offsets to line things up better. Since your filenames are labeled "pixelData" I assume that's the behavior you would prefer. In that case, in Beyond Compare you can change that by using the Session menu's Session Settings... command and switching the "Comparison" alignment setting from "Complete" to "None".
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