Universal Token-Based Merge Strategy Reduces Spurious Git Conflicts from Refactoring

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New merge algorithm for version control systems operates at the token level rather than line level, reducing spurious conflicts caused by refactoring and parallel edits that traditional line-based algorithms (like Git's default) mishandle. Unlike syntax-aware merge tools that require language-specific parsers, this approach works universally across programming languages using tokenization. Practical for teams experiencing frequent merge conflicts from concurrent refactoring — a drop-in improvement over line-based diff.