Each language port of Diff Match Patch uses the same API. These are the language-specific notes regarding Python.

Python comes in two incompatible flavours; Python 2 and Python 3. Choose the version that's compatible with your interpreter. Python 2 is somewhat faster than Python 3. Type python --version to find out which version your system has installed.

Here's a minimal example of a diff in Python:

import diff_match_patch as dmp_module

dmp = dmp_module.diff_match_patch()
diff = dmp.diff_main("Hello World.", "Goodbye World.")
# Result: [(-1, "Hell"), (1, "G"), (0, "o"), (1, "odbye"), (0, " World.")]
dmp.diff_cleanupSemantic(diff)
# Result: [(-1, "Hello"), (1, "Goodbye"), (0, " World.")]
print(diff)

Go to the python2 or python3 directory and save the above program as hello.py. Then execute python hello.py.

Unit tests can be performed from the python/tests directory by executing python diff_match_patch_test.py. Over twenty test groups should run, with zero failures.

Speed test for diff can be performed from the python/tests directory by executing python speedtest.py. It takes about 20 seconds.