Utility for text file compare?

[Rick]

I have two ASCII text files about 18 meg in size that I need to compare.
Can someone suggest a good tool to use? I've been using FC.EXE but I'm
not sure what I'm seeing in the output. I'd like to see the line
numbers of where they don't compare correctly, but FC is displaying
numbers higher than the total number of lines in my text files. Very
confusing.

My lines are wide -- 180 chars or so -- maybe FC thinks a long line is
actually several lines. Thanks for any advice.

 

[John Wunderlich]

I have two ASCII text files about 18 meg in size that I need to
compare. Can someone suggest a good tool to use? I've been using
FC.EXE but I'm not sure what I'm seeing in the output. I'd like
to see the line numbers of where they don't compare correctly, but
FC is displaying numbers higher than the total number of lines in
my text files. Very confusing.

My lines are wide -- 180 chars or so -- maybe FC thinks a long
line is actually several lines. Thanks for any advice.

I use the freeware "WinMerge"
<http://winmerge.org/>

HTH,
John

 

[Big_Al]

Rick said this on 1/13/2009 4:40 PM:

I have two ASCII text files about 18 meg in size that I need to compare.
Can someone suggest a good tool to use? I've been using FC.EXE but I'm
not sure what I'm seeing in the output. I'd like to see the line
numbers of where they don't compare correctly, but FC is displaying
numbers higher than the total number of lines in my text files. Very
confusing.

My lines are wide -- 180 chars or so -- maybe FC thinks a long line is
actually several lines. Thanks for any advice.

I think Fc is giving you offset in bytes from the beginning of the file.

Checkout windiff. I don't have a link for it but we downloaded it for
free at the office and it shows the file(s) colorized by line.

You can run it from explorer then pick the files, or you can supply the
two files as arguments if running from the command line. But its a
windows gui program.

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

I have two ASCII text files about 18 meg in size that I need to compare.
Can someone suggest a good tool to use? I've been using FC.EXE but I'm
not sure what I'm seeing in the output. I'd like to see the line
numbers of where they don't compare correctly, but FC is displaying
numbers higher than the total number of lines in my text files. Very
confusing.

My lines are wide -- 180 chars or so -- maybe FC thinks a long line is
actually several lines. Thanks for any advice.

You need to add the /N switch to see the line numbers. Type fc.exe /? at the
Command Prompt to see the various switches.

 

[Big_Al]

Big_Al said this on 1/13/2009 4:56 PM:

Rick said this on 1/13/2009 4:40 PM:

I think Fc is giving you offset in bytes from the beginning of the file.

Checkout windiff. I don't have a link for it but we downloaded it for
free at the office and it shows the file(s) colorized by line.

You can run it from explorer then pick the files, or you can supply the
two files as arguments if running from the command line. But its a
windows gui program.

After a bit of google, seems windiff that I have is a Microsoft product.
Not 3rd party.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/159214
Follow some of the links here at wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WinDiff

 

[Rick]

Right -- I do have the /N switch and it's showing me what sure look like
line numbers but they're higher than the total number of lines. Maybe
as a previous responder noted, what seem to be line numbers are actually
bytes from the beginning of the file?