initially, even the diff applicator was meant to be a
"throwaway" object. But then, on writing some tests,
it seemed natural to allow re-using a single applicator,
after having attached it to some target.
With that change, I failed to care for the garbage
left back in the "old" sequence after applying one diff;
since in the typical usage sequence, the first use builds
content from scratch, this problem starts to show up only
with the third usage, where the garbage left from the input
of the second usage appears at the begin of the "new sequence"
Solution is to throw away that garbage explicitly on re-entrance