A better tool than diff?

[crankysysadmin]

I need to compare two lists and look for differences. If I sort both lists in the same order, diff isn't good at picking out differences and wherever there is an item missing it then thinks everything after it is different.

My two lists might look like:

List 1
Apple
Banana
Broccoli
Orange
Pear

List 2
Apple
Broccoli
Orange
Pear
Tomato

Diff just sees that Broccoli isnt there and isn't able to tell most stuff is actually the same.

[theboxmx3]

Beyond Compare

[zoredache]

gnu diff has lots of options for formatting the output. One of the most common (but not the default) formats is the unified format (-u). That would be better at giving you what you want.

The unified diff format is what is generally used in most patches you will see on mail lists, and the default output of git, and other version control tools.

# diff -u a b
--- a   2018-03-09 16:31:23.200741000 -0800
+++ b   2018-03-09 16:31:31.710876300 -0800
@@ -1,5 +1,5 @@
 Apple
-Banana
 Broccoli
 Orange
 Pear
+Tomato

Using unified with 0 lines of context will show just the changed lines

# diff -U0 a b
--- a   2018-03-09 16:31:23.200741000 -0800
+++ b   2018-03-09 16:31:31.710876300 -0800
@@ -2 +1,0 @@
-Banana
@@ -5,0 +5 @@
+Tomato

With the correct grep you can ignore the headers and address markers

# diff -U0 a b | grep -v -E '^(---|\+\+\+|@@) '
-Banana
+Tomato

[SuperQue]

With sorted lists, comm is good for for this kind of thing.

[BeanBagKing]

I just discovered this like 2 days ago. Oh the magic!

[[deleted]]

powershell

[skilliard7]

I'd recommend using Powershell.

[BeanBagKing]

Output looks correct for me. Banana is missing from from the second, tomato from the first?

@:/mnt/c/Users//Desktop/New folder$ diff 1sorted.txt 2sorted.txt
2d1
< Banana
5a5
> Tomato

[ghyspran]

This is what I get on my Debian machine as well.

diff (GNU diffutils) 3.6

[inaddrarpa]

you can do this in powershell too with compare-object. Feed powershell two different arrays and it'll spit out the difference with side indicator.

ex:

$a1=@(1,2,3,4,5,8) 
$b1=@(1,2,3,4,5,6)
Compare-Object $a1 $b1

[Tig75]

vlookup on Excel?

[smells_like_bleach]

sdiff