Hi,

This is something which I have been trying to solve. Basically I have some files in my LInux box (in different directories) that have the same name but with different contents.

I want to write a shell script that will compare between a given pair of such files and write in a report file if at all the files are similar or different.

As an input the program takes a filename each time it is run and then compares it in different directories to produce the result. Next time when the script is again executed it takes as an input another filename and produces the difference report between these two files.

Any help regarding this will be highly appreciated.

Thanks and Regards
Prasun

You can use diff to compare files (type man diff for more information).

Thanks a lot but I was really looking for a script.

Regards
Prasun

Thanks a lot , I was looking at something like this only , but I still have a question i.e say for eg there's difference in the content of the two files i.e file1 and file2 . How do I then go n report in the report file that "there is a difference" .I mean I could not construct the if ........ statment here.It will be driven by this logic if [there's a difference ]
then
echo "message" .....


Please help me to write this code

Thanks and Regards
Prasun

diff returns 0 if the files are equal, and 1 if they are not.

If you're more of a minimalist, there is also cmp, which won't find all the actual differences as intelligently diff will but will tell you if the files are different or not. See the cmp man page; it's return values are documented. See the sh/csh/whatever man pages for info about how the scripts actually work and how to evaluate the return value of a command and construct if statements and stuff.

Thanks a lot , I think now I can independently design the script

Regards
Prasun