Passing channel to cancel a diff

[amlwwalker]

Hello!
This is a cool bit of work.
I am looking to cancel a diff (on large files where the diff takes time), I want to pass a channel into the function that gets checked for a message (on a switch case) and if a value comes off the channel, it cancels the diff and stops in its tracks and cleans up.

My questions.

Where best to put the channel? I am thinking to fork your work.

There is the line of code:

binarydist/diff.go

Lines 234 to 240 in 190e7de

	for scan < len(nbuf) {
	var oldscore int
	scan += length
	for scsc := scan; scan < len(nbuf); scan++ {
	pos, length = search(I, obuf, nbuf[scan:], 0, len(obuf))
	for ; scsc < scan+length; scsc++ {

I.e the

for scan < len(nbuf) { 

line of code.

If I pass a channel into this function, and then inside the for loop, do a switch case can I stop the diff safely and destroy whatever diffing has already occured and pass back a success message?
Its just because on larger files diffing can take some time and I'd like to be able to stop it...

Thanks!

[kr]

Given the way binarydist is currently implemented, a fork sounds reasonable.

(I think it would be preferable for binarydist to write the diff directly to the given Writer (if it's also a Seeker) rather than to a buffer. If it did, you could have the Writer cancel the diff by returning an error. But of course that would require some changes to this library.)