Comparing the contents of two files

[archer]

Hello Monks, I have to compare the contents of two files and the output should be a report which should give the text that is present in file1 and not in file2 and vice versa. Which logic can i use to implement the same??

File 1: "This is a site for perl questions.Really helpful!!!"

File 2: "This is a site where you get your perl queries cleared.Really helpful!!!"

The output should be:
"for perl questions." - present in file 1 but not in file 2

"where you get your perl queries cleared." - present in file 2 but not in file 1
How to achieve this???

[moritz]

I'd try to look on CPAN for solutions or partial solutions, like Algorithm::Diff or Text::WordDiff.

[derby]

Not a perl solution but I prefer to use sdiff for things like this.

[JavaFan]

There's a standard POSIX utility that does that: comm. It assumes your files are sorted (but if not, that's easy to do). In bash, you can write:

comm <(sort file1) <(sort file2)

and it prints three columns, one with lines only in file1, one with lines only in file2, and one with lines in both files.

[onelesd]

Your example shows differences on a single line, but your question asks about differences in a file. These will require different solutions, but maybe you are looking for a solution that handles both.

Like another has suggested, I would look at POSIX's comm, and then perhaps run the results from that through String::Diff.