patches question

[Linuxnewbie]

I noticed that there were a couple of modification to the way the map system works. i ran the most recent version this morning and didn't notice this patch in it. (also saw no metion of it in the official release) i would like to implement this feature into my system so i downloaded the 2 diff files (map.h.diff and map.cpp.diff)

then problem is i am not to sure what to do now. i tried deleting the old map.h and map.cpp file and copying the .diff files to those names but i just got an error on compile.

so my question to you now is what do i do. should i just copy them into the src directory and compile with the old map.h and map.cpp file or is there some trick i don't know about.

I apologize for being such a newbie to this but i am learning :)

thanks in advance for any advise