CODEWITHSUNDEEP
comparisondiff
the_new_mr
the_new_mr

Reputation: 3743

Way to output differences between two files (preferably using command line)

I am familiar with tools such as tkDiff and WinMerge and am aware of how to see the difference between two files.

What I'm looking to do is to produce a report of elements in one file that are not present in another.

For example:

File1 contains:

apple
cool
dude
flan

File2 contains:

apple
ball
cool
dude
elephant

I want to produce a report that contains:

ball
elephant

Or, better yet, a report like this:

+ball
+elephant
-flan

Does anybody know of a tool that can do this? Preferably with command line options.

The report feature in WinMerge isn't too far off what I'd like but there is no command line option to do this (as far as I know).

Thanks in advance.

Upvotes: 29

Views: 50518

Answers (3)

The Archetypal Paul
The Archetypal Paul

Reputation: 41779

You probably want the Unix comm utility. Windows versions are included in gnuwin32

NAME

   comm - compare two sorted files line by line

SYNOPSIS

   comm [OPTION]... FILE1 FILE2

DESCRIPTION

   Compare sorted files FILE1 and FILE2 line by line.

   With  no    options,  produce  three-column  output.  Column one contains
   lines unique to FILE1, column two contains lines unique to  FILE2,  and
   column three contains lines common to both files.

   -1     suppress lines unique to FILE1

   -2     suppress lines unique to FILE2

   -3     suppress lines that appear in both files

Upvotes: 26

Hari
Hari

Reputation: 1

To compare data with command prompt you can use

COMP /a /l D:\Folder1\data.txt D:\Folder2\data.txt

Here are other options to compare files and folders with command prompt.

Upvotes: -4

potong
potong

Reputation: 58578

This might work for you (GNU diff):

diff -u file1 file2 | sed -n '1,2d;/^[-+]/p'
+ball
-flan
+elephant

Upvotes: 47

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