What is the difference between the generated merged xml and the pretty.xml?

[JoshuaBolin]

After merging a config in Expedition, when you generate the XML you get two files: projectname.xml and projectname.zip.  The ZIP contains a text doc with the set commands as well as the same projectname.xml and a larger projectname-pretty.xml.  What is the difference between the two xml files?

To further elaborate, here is a sanitized example:

I was pulling in some security and nat rules along with objects into a panorama config.  At the same time I wanted to do a little cleanup on duplicate address objects in Panorama.

So I pulled a fresh config from Panorama: PANOCONFIG.xml (size 18,697 KB)

After the work was performed and the merged output was generated I got these files:

MT-PANOCONFIG.xml (size 11,466 KB) and from the zip file after being extracted MT-PANOCONFIG-PRETTY.xml (size 19,448 KB)

The "pretty" one is what I would expect to see size wise as I added to the config so it is now bigger than the original exported config.  But ultimately both the 11KB xml and the 19KB xml work the same, so what is the difference between the two and which one should be used when importing back into Panorama?

[dgildelaig · Accepted solution]

The difference is on how the content is written.

The pretty XML maintains tabs and spaces to be able to read it easier (human readable).

While it is easier to read, it may actually become larger in size. To allow having smaller files and avoid possible limitations uploading them to devices, we have a smaller version, that only differs on those spaces and blanks. Therefore, content wise are exactly the same