Ignore Trivial Differences, Like Timestamps

During a Text Compare session it is often convenient to ignore things like dates and times. Beyond Compare can do this by creating a rule for what is Unimportant, using a Regular Expression. In the example below, if you wanted to ignore Lines 1 and 2, you can write an appropriate RegEx for each. Then when you press the Minor key, any differences which you defined as Unimportant Differences will lose their color highlighting. Also, in a Text Compare Report, they can be ignored.

First, from the Rules button, choose: Rules->Importance->[+]->#RegEx

Then add these rules to ignore the following lines:

Line 1: \d\d\d

Line 2: Date/Time:.

Line 7: IP Address:.\d+.\d+.\d+.\d+.*