> For instance writing a diff algorithm on plain text files is much simpler and easy to understand, than writing diff algorithms on text or binary structures.

> For instance writing a diff algorithm on plain text files is much simpler and easy to understand, than writing diff algorithms on text or binary structures. I'd argue the opposite. Coming up with a good, human readable, diff on unstructured text within acceptable runtime is not that easy. LCS is NP-hard and the naive algorithm has unacceptable performance and memory footprint. However diffing something structured, especially when it has unique keys like in most databases, is really easy. Structure gives you an easy way to compare data systematically and is handy to express differences.