Per-Cell Object Mode Options

-t obj_types
The obj_types is a word containing any or all of the letters c,b,p,w,l which indicate cells, boxes, polygons, wires, and labels. The letters indicate the types of objects that will be considered. If this option is not given, the default is ``cbpw'', i.e., labels are ignored.

Comparison of labels can lead to false differences when comparing cells read from different file formats, since label bounding boxes are not well defined across file format conversion.

-b
When given, a two-vertex wire or four-vertex polygon that is rendered as a Manhattan rectangle will match a rectangle object with the same dimensions. Thus, files that have had these features converted to boxes to save space can be directly compared, without a lot of spurious entries in output.

-n
When given, if duplicate objects are present in one or both of the files, unmatched duplicates will not be reported if one of the duplicates has a match. Thus files with duplicates removed can be compared with the original file, and the duplicates will not appear in output as differences.

-x
Expand subcell arrays (if comparing subcells). Cell arrays are converted to individual placements before comparison, avoiding false errors between arrayed and equivalent unarrayed layouts.

-h
The cell list is expanded so that all cells in the hierarchy under the given cells are compared. The left source is used to extract the hierarchy cells. The left source must have been specified, this option does no apply if the left cells are in memory.

-e
If -e is given, electrical cells will be compared. Otherwise, physical cells are compared.

Property comparisons are available only in per-cell object mode. Property lists of cells, instances, and objects can be filtered by property number and compared. Only the property lists of otherwise identical instances or objects will be compared. Property comparison is turned off by default, but can be enabled with the -p option.

-p spec_word
This option will set up property list comparison, which is available in per-cell object comparison mode. The spec_word is a collection of characters from the list below, order is unimportant.

b, p, w, l, c, s
The presence of these letters enables property list comparison between boxes, polygons, wires, labels, instances, and cells. The indicated object type or instance must also be enabled for checking with the -t option or by default, or the letter is ignored. The s character will always enable comparison of the property lists of the two source cells.

n,u
These two letters control the filtering applied to property lists before comparison. The filters limit the properties to compare. If n is given, no filtering is applied, so that all properties will be considered. This overrides u (below) if both are given.

If u is given, custom filtering will be applied. There are separate filters available for properties of cells, instances, and objects, for both physical and electrical comparisons. Custom filtering can be set up through the Custom Property Filter Setup panel, or by directly setting the corresponding variables. See the description of the panel in 14.13.3 for complete information.

If neither of these letters appear, default filtering is applied. For physical data, the default filtering action is no filtering. For electrical data, filtering is applied to cell and instance properties, and object properties are ignored, so that difference reporting applies to user-defined properties only.

Properties are compared by number and string. In the output file, property comparison result lines are all in comment form (with `#' as the first character) so that they will be ignored if the file is subsequently processed with the !diffcells command. Property comparison results consist of a string indicating the cell, instance, or object containing the properties. If an instance or object, this is common to both input sources. Following this are listings of properties found in one source and not the other. Properties that are identical in the two sources are not listed.