on that accepts a character (string of length 1), and returns true iff the character is junk. The default is the module-level function IS_CHARACTER_JUNK, which filters out whitespace characters (a blank or tab; note: it's a bad idea to include newline in this!). Tools/scripts/ndiff.py is a command-line front-end to this function. Example: >>> diff = ndiff('one\ntwo\nthree\n'.splitlines(keepends=True), ... 'ore\ntree\nemu\n'.splitlines(keepends=True)) >>> print(''.join(diff), end="") - one ? ^ + ore ? ^ - two - three ? - + tree + emu )