diff --git a/tools/rendr/rend.R b/tools/rendr/rend.R
index 6ec143407951fde557197cc23cece3a879d9b0d4..32a00f75527401dbd26451299db62b8b2214bd0c 100755
--- a/tools/rendr/rend.R
+++ b/tools/rendr/rend.R
@@ -17,6 +17,7 @@ suppressMessages(if (!require("docopt")) install.packages("docopt"))
 suppressMessages(if (!require("knitr")) install.packages("knitr"))
 suppressMessages(if (!require("stringr")) install.packages("stringr"))
 suppressMessages(if (!require("rmarkdown")) install.packages("rmarkdown"))
+suppressMessages(if (!require("diffobj")) install.packages("diffobj"))
 # disabled because user script will fail if they load plyr before dplyr
 #suppressMessages(if (!require("dplyr")) install.packages("dplyr"))
 
@@ -64,6 +65,42 @@ if(!file.exists(r_script)){
 }
 
 
+
+# check previous script versions
+script_name <- str_replace(basename(r_script), ".R", "")
+current_script <- paste0(".", script_name, "_", format(Sys.time(), "%Y%m%d_%H%M.R"))
+
+all_files <- file.info(list.files(".", pattern = paste0("\\.", script_name), all.files = T))
+recent_script <- rownames(all_files)[which.max(all_files$mtime)]
+
+if (identical(recent_script, character(0))) {
+    recent_script = r_script
+}
+
+row_diff <- system(paste("diff -U 0", recent_script, r_script, "| grep '^@' | wc -l"), intern = T) %>% as.numeric()
+print(paste0("differences between the recent_script (", recent_script, ") and the currently used r_script (", r_script, ")"))
+diffFile(recent_script, r_script, mode = "sidebyside")
+
+if(row_diff > 0) {
+    print("ATTENTION: the script has been changed")
+    cat("Would you like to overwrite the existing data? [Yes/No]")
+    inp <- readLines(file("stdin"), n = 1L)
+
+    if (!inp == "Yes" & !inp %in% "No") {
+        stop("ATTENTION: incorrect input provided")
+    } else if (inp == "No") {
+        stop("ATTENTION: Script stopped based on your choice")
+    } else {
+        file.copy(r_script, current_script)
+    }
+} else if (recent_script == r_script) {
+    file.copy(r_script, current_script)
+} else {
+    file.copy(r_script, current_script)
+    file.remove(recent_script)
+}
+
+
 ## Create a temporary script in the current working directory to ensure that created resources plots etc can be inlined
 ## To allow for additional resoucrces from the scripts directory to be inlined into the final documents, the directory
 ## of the script is exposed as a variable called RENDR_SCRIPT_DIR