Unix comparing file

The problem is they are differing only in few bytes for e. File sizes -- why do they change? I just noticed that the copy of a file I made is smaller than the original, although I hardly made any changes to it. Can anyone tell me what determines the size of files? They're all. It's really frustrating, because I'm using them to respond to job ads and the Is there a command that will return the name of the largest file within a directory?

If so, can I set the returned filename into a variable? RedHat Commands. OpenSolaris Commands. Linux Commands. SunOS Commands. FreeBSD Commands. Full Man Repository. Advanced Search. Contact Us. Forum Rules. Diff is not working? Diff should work. Not programming Move to superuser. Add a comment. Active Oldest Votes. I got the solution by using comm comm file1 file2 will give you the desired output.

The files need to be sorted first anyway. According to comm man page , it works on lexically sorted files. Thus, you will have to use sort on your files first.

Well, you can just sort the files first, and diff the sorted files. The comments on specific commands can be removed to exit at the first difference seen, and if you desire to see every line that is read.

Sign up to join this community. The best answers are voted up and rise to the top. Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group. Create a free Team What is Teams? Learn more. Two files comparison in bash script? Ask Question. Asked 4 years, 3 months ago. Active 1 year, 5 months ago. Viewed 93k times. How to write it?

Improve this question. Patrick Mevzek 2, 2 2 gold badges 17 17 silver badges 28 28 bronze badges. Have you try to use diff command? Add a comment. Active Oldest Votes. To just test whether two files are the same, use cmp -s :! If your two input files contains list of pathnames of files that you wish to compare, then use a double loop like so:! Looking at the two small files, we see that the md5 checksums seem to have no similarity whatsoever. Of course, to be valuable, checksums have to compute identically on different systems.

Fortunately for us, this should always be the case. Sandra Henry-Stocker has been administering Unix systems for more than 30 years. She describes herself as "USL" Unix as a second language but remembers enough English to write books and buy groceries.

She lives in the mountains in Virginia where, when not working with or writing about Unix, she's chasing the bears away from her bird feeders. Here are the latest Insider stories. More Insider Sign Out.

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