Two kinds of difference
The lexical diff is exact: every changed line, classified as whitespace, quotes, comment or content changes. Filters let you hide the noise while reviewing, and the hidden count stays visible.
The semantic comparison parses both sides under the selected profile and compares their representation graphs. port: 8080 against port: "8080" is a type change; 1_048_576 is a string in YAML 1.2 but an integer in YAML 1.1 — switch the profile to see the difference appear or disappear.
Questions
- Does key order count as a difference?
- YAML mappings are unordered, so a reordered mapping is reported as “equivalent, keys reordered”. The line diff still shows the moves.
- What about anchors?
- The comparison checks alias identity: if one side shares a node through an anchor and the other repeats a copy, that is reported.