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Use the command cmp to check if two files are the same byte by byte. The command cmp does not list differences like the diff command. However it is handy for a fast check of whether two files are the same or not (especially useful for binary data files).
On Windows 10, "fc" is a command-line tool that comes built-in to the system, and it allows you to compare two similar files to determine how they changed over time.
diff determines whether a file is text or binary by checking the first few bytes in the file; the exact number of bytes is system dependent, but it is typically several thousand. If every byte in that part of the file is non-null, diff considers the file to be text; otherwise it considers the file to be binary.
This tool has a nice feature I'm missing a little bit in meld. You can compare binary files like e. g. bitmaps. contain binary data saved by our applications. Would be nice to have this in meld, nevertheless meld is a great tool!
If you want to find out only whether or not the files are identical, you can use the Windows fc command in binary mode:
fc.exe /b file1 file2
For details, see the reference for fc
A few possibilities:
See also: https://web.archive.org/web/20151122151611/https://stackoverflow.com/questions/688504/binary-diff-tool-for-very-large-files
Total Commander also has a binary compare option:
go to: File \\Compare by content
ps. I guess some people may alredy be using this tool and may not be aware of the built-in feature.
My favorite "swiss knife" is Beyond Compare from http://www.scootersoftware.com/
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