11

I am trying to perform a line-by-line comparison of contents in file using Beyond Compare 3 or 4. There is a caveat. The lines do not necessarily have the same order in the files. Examples below:

Example 1:

File 1 contents:
value1.key=mango
value2.key=pear

File 2 contents:
value2.key=pear
value1.key=mango

This should say "files identical" on comparison.

Example 2:

File 1 contents:
value1.key=mango
value2.key=pear
value3.key=apple

File 2 contents:
value2.key=pear
value3.key=banana
value1.key=mango

This should report only the following in the comparison:
value3.key=apple | value3.key=banana

Example 3:

File 1 contents:
value1.key=mango
value2.key=pear
value3.key=apple

File 2 contents:
value3.key=apple
value1.key=mango

This should report only the following in the comparison:
value2.key=pear

Can someone please tell me if this is achievable using Beyond Compare?

techjourneyman
  • 1,701
  • 3
  • 33
  • 53
  • If you are allowed to sort both files first, this could definitely be done with `diff`, `comm`, and probably also with Beyond Compare (I'm not overly familiar with it, though). If you can't sort the files, something like `awk`, `python` or `perl` could be used to build a hash/map/dict of the lines in each file and then check that they are equivalent... – twalberg Dec 16 '14 at 16:23
  • 1
    I have thought about that. I was wondering if there is anyway we can do without the sorting. There is also the {{sort}} command in dos available to sort file contents. – techjourneyman Dec 16 '14 at 18:29

1 Answers1

26

For those still interested:

When comparing files you can choose the files format (from the toolbar button "format"), just choose "sorted" and you can achieve this kind of comparison.

Dima Lechtchinski
  • 308
  • 4
  • 8
  • doesn't work for my case, but opening in Python I can load the files as lists of lines, and then create a set of lines out of the lists, and subtract the sets. I want BeyondCompare to load the lines as sets, which doesn't depend on sorting. – nmz787 Aug 09 '19 at 21:14