trouble with fc.exe in XP home edition

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Guest

I cannot seem to figure out how to correctly run fc.exe (I'm using Windows XP
home edition). Every time I try to use it I get the error message "fc: cannot
open (filename) - No such file or folder
Each time, I have made sure that both files are on the same directory (c:)
I have tried both of these formats:
fc filename.xxx 2ndfilename.xxx
The help message when I pull up fc/? says to use the format
[drive1:][path1]filename 1 [drive2:][path2]filename2
But this doesn't work either-at least not how I'm interpreting it
So my question is if (for example) I want to use fc.exe to compare two
notepad documents stored in My Documents, and the documents have the file
paths
c:\documents and settings\ben johnson\my documents\document1.txt AND
c:\documents and settings\ben johnson\my documents\document2.txt ,
what is the proper syntax for comparing these files with fc.exe using the
command prompt in XP home edition? Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks.
 
Compares two files or sets of files and displays the differences between
them


FC [/A] [/C] [/L] [/LBn] [/N] [/OFF[LINE]] [/T] [/U] [/W] [/nnnn]
[drive1:][path1]filename1 [drive2:][path2]filename2
FC /B [drive1:][path1]filename1 [drive2:][path2]filename2

/A Displays only first and last lines for each set of differences.
/B Performs a binary comparison.
/C Disregards the case of letters.
/L Compares files as ASCII text.
/LBn Sets the maximum consecutive mismatches to the specified
number of lines.
/N Displays the line numbers on an ASCII comparison.
/OFF[LINE] Do not skip files with offline attribute set.
/T Does not expand tabs to spaces.
/U Compare files as UNICODE text files.
/W Compresses white space (tabs and spaces) for comparison.
/nnnn Specifies the number of consecutive lines that must match
after a mismatch.
[drive1:][path1]filename1
Specifies the first file or set of files to compare.
[drive2:][path2]filename2
Specifies the second file or set of files to compare.
 
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