Dear experts

I have files like

ABD : 5869 events, relative ratio : 1.173800E-01 , sum of ratios : 1.173800E-01
VBD : 12147 events, relative ratio : 2.429400E-01 , sum of ratios : 3.603200E-01
SDF : 17000 events, relative ratio : 3.400000E-01 , sum of ratios : 7.003200E-01
OIP: 14984 events, relative ratio : 2.996800E-01 , sum of ratios : 1.000000E+00

so, the values I want to compare are separated with a ':' followed by a space -- I want to use file1 as reference, and compare file2 value by value and line by line but comparing only columns 2,3 etc until the end of each line, and if I have a mismatch by a certain ratio (valueA/valueB) while comparing each given column on each given line do something, (actionA) otherwise do actionB

Thanks in advance
Edit/Delete Message

Awk is the tool you'll want to use here. Or else a general text-processing language like perl.

Here are a few useful awk references:
http://www.grymoire.com/Unix/Awk.html
http://www.gnu.org/software/gawk/man...ode/index.html
http://www.informatik.uni-hamburg.de.../gawk_toc.html
http://www.pement.org/awk/awk1line.txt
http://www.catonmat.net/blog/awk-one...ined-part-one/


You'll have to be more specific about your exact goals if you want any detailed help.


And please use [code][/code] tags around your code, to preserve formatting and to improve readability.

Perl is pretty good at that sort of thing; here's some useful links http://perldoc.perl.org/ http://www.perlmonks.org/?node=Tutorials

we need...

example files, expected output.


Then we can probably help.