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Re^3: compare and find difference between two files

by mr_mischief (Monsignor)
on Jul 16, 2014 at 13:45 UTC ( [id://1093871]=note: print w/replies, xml ) Need Help??


in reply to Re^2: compare and find difference between two files
in thread compare and find difference between two files

There's msys for diff and other common Unix tools for Windows, or what about fc.exe? That command has been around since DOS. Did Windows 7 and 8 do away with it?

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Re^4: compare and find difference between two files
by Bethany (Scribe) on Jul 16, 2014 at 13:55 UTC

    Sure, those could be suitable substitutes.

    I say "could" because my memories of fc and the like are vague; I haven't used DOS for command-line stuff in years. I either switch to Linux or bring up a Cygwin terminal, avoiding what I see as less powerful work-arounds.

    TMTOWTDMTOWTDI!

      Cygwin is awesome and mighty, but hardly lightweight. I can have msys, msys git, Strawberry Perl, and a decent terminal emulator on a Windows PC and not worry about disk space, differences in paths between inside Cygwin and outside it, etc. Having bash and the usual command-line stuff within native Windows is a pretty nice thing.

      I don't in practice do this much these days. I have Windows at home only for games (one laptop and one desktop). I have a desktop, two laptops, and a server with Linux. My girlfriend has an Air and will soon have a Linux desktop. For work I have OS X for a desktop and laptop but do most of my work on Linux VMs. I don't really need to use Windows for anything, but it makes a nicely flexible and upgradable gaming console. I have spent plenty of time on DOS, Windows, NetWare, OS/2, Apple DOS, BeOS, and other systems, too. Linux and the open source BSDs weren't announced yet when I started using computers.

        True, a full Cygwin install is a beast that consumes a chunk of storage. I don't mind, mine's an old machine but it has two terabytes of hard drives. Since I have just one PC here in the office I run Ubuntu Saucy in a VirtualBox. Give it a couple of cores and it runs reasonably sprightly. Not like a dedicated box but it's what I can afford. :-}

        I might be more tolerant of present-day performance 'cos I remember all too well how things were when I began programming. I wrote programs with a pen on IBM FORTRAN coding sheets, sent them off by weekly courier to a college a hundred miles away where a keypunch operator turned them into cards. The cards got run into an IBM 709 or possibly 7090, not sure which. A week or (more likely) two later I got back the cards plus a thick sheaf of greenbar cover pages, accounting data, and error messages. If I was lucky there'd be a page or two of program output somewhere in there. It's amazing I ever managed to learn anything that way. (Now that I think about it, that was a mighty "monastic" way to code.) Five or six years later I finally got access to an interactive terminal. (eta: IBM Selectric set up for APL\360 with a dedicated phone line to the mainframe at the College of William and Mary.) Rarely have I been so glad to see an epoch end.

        Beg pardon, too much nostalgic off-topicness. Back to Perl and instant gratification, yay!

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