Press Ctrl+O or select the “Select Files/Directories…” item in the File popup menu to open the selection dialog. Enter the left-side and right-side path — a file, a directory or an archive, in any combination — either directly, via the drop-down history of previous selections, or with the Dir… / File… browse buttons. After the selection, both sides are analyzed, compared and displayed.
The dialog is not the only way in. You can also drop files or folders from the Windows Explorer onto the Diffoniq window: drop two at once to compare them, or drop a single one onto the left or right pane to replace just that side and keep the other as it is. Dropping onto an empty window is fine too — that side is shown on its own until you supply the second. Exclude patterns that are in effect stay in effect: a drop changes what is compared, not how. Starting Diffoniq with two paths on the command line does the same without the dialog.
If one of the paths contains wildcard characters, a directory listing
filtered by that pattern is displayed instead. The filter applies to
files only: subdirectories are always listed and scanned, so a mask
like C:\src\*.cpp still compares the whole tree. Several masks
can be combined with semicolons (e.g. *.cpp;*.hpp); matching is
case-insensitive, ? stands for a single character, and
*.* means every file — with or without an extension.
Each side has an Exclude field: one or more wildcard
patterns, separated by semicolons (e.g. *.bak;tmp), for files and
subdirectories that should not appear in the directory comparison —
typical candidates are backup files, build output or version-control
folders. An excluded directory disappears together with its whole subtree.
The same patterns and rules apply as for the path masks above, and they work
inside archives as well.
For longer filter lists, the … button next to each Exclude field opens an editor that shows the same list with one pattern per line — add, change or delete lines there instead of scrolling through a semicolon-separated string. The window can be resized (it keeps its size for the rest of the session), and OK writes the patterns back to the Exclude field; blank lines and surrounding spaces are ignored.
The Saved list stores complete selections — both paths and both exclude filters — each under a name of your choice. Type a name in the Name field (or leave it empty for an automatic one) and press Save; a short confirmation appears below the list.
Click a configuration to load its four fields (so you can review or adjust the parameters), and double-click it to load and start the comparison in one step. Delete removes the configuration named in the Name field (or the one selected in the list).
While you edit the fields, the list tracks what you have: when the fields match a saved configuration it is highlighted automatically; once you change a parameter of a loaded configuration, the status line shows it as (modified). The list keeps the most recently used configuration on top: confirming a selection with OK moves its entry to the front. Saving under an existing name replaces that entry.
On the next start, Diffoniq restores the selections from the end of the previous session. Command line arguments take precedence over the restored settings.