Tool to compare plugin lists and narrow down problem mods (source code inside)

[CoreyN11388]

Ok, so many players are having crashes in Elder Scrolls and Fallout games, for many reasons: user error, mod problem, incompatibilities, etc... As a START to trying to make it an easier process, I had a friend write up a program to compare mod lists. Unfortunately, it can only do 2 at a time right now, but if anyone else knows how to do this sort of thing, maybe they can improve on it, and this can help people narrow down an issue, and help both modders and users.

Preferably, a tool like this could take a batch of like, 10 or 20 lists at a time and compare them, then spit out the similar entries. So for example, if these 20 or whatever people are crashing and don't know why, they'd all submit their load orders, straight from the plugin.txt, (without the official esm's from the game and DLC's and WITHOUT the asterisks), and someone would take those lists, and plug them into the tool, and start it, then it would show you which mod/s are the same between those lists. This would help narrow down issues to being consistently from specific mods, and then this info can be given to the authors of those mods, to try and figure out what is causing the crash.

He made the program and sent me the source code, but hasn't had a chance to test it yet, but is sure it should work. Again, it's small and simple, but it would be amazing if someone could take this idea, and turn it into a full blown, must have tool for Skyrim/FO/etc... for modders and users to compare their lists to narrow down issues. This obviously wouldn't be a definitive, "this mod has issues", type tool, but it could definitely help narrow things down if crashes are being experienced and majority of users have maybe the SAME mod, or something, then that mod could most likely be the culprit.

 

Even with great tools out there, LOOT, NMM, Wrye Smash/Bash, etc... As well as great modders, it sometimes takes a long time to narrow an issue down, because it could be small, or hard to find, and with tons of people posting their load orders, some of those lists being 100-200+ mods long, it would take way too long to compare manually and a tool like this, if expanded and perfected, could immensely help modders and users alike and shorten that investigation time dramatically. I personally don't have any programming experience atm, so I couldn't write and do this tool myself, but my friend said he could whip something up basic, so here it is, and I hope maybe one day, something like this could be one of those, "must have", tools for modding games, like Script Extenders, LOOT, Mod Managers, etc...:

Source Code: http://pastebin.com/ZwMKPHzf