Comparison of hex files in Linux. File - linux file comparison gui

Today I was asked to compare small paragraph headings in two large text files. All titles started with an asterisk, so there were no problems. But it’s not interesting at all, and more out of boredom than for real use, I wanted to find a way to extract headings from any text. Unfortunately, a 100% working method was not found, but at the end of the article there will be an interesting solution for turning double or more empty lines into one empty line.

To begin with, the simplest option is when you just need to compare 2 text files.
There is a diff command for this. The syntax is as follows:

diff first_file second_file

It is much more convenient to redirect the output to a file with the diff extension

diff first_file second_file > profit.diff

If you open such a file in a text editor, the syntax will be highlighted and the analysis process will be easier.

The program compares strings and if one of the files contains a line that is not in the other, then a “>” or “

To get the output of lines that start with a single character (in this case it is *), the best way is to use the grep command. For example, if you want to send to file 1.txt all the lines that start with “*” in the file file.txt, then to do this you should run

grep "^*" "file.txt" > 1.txt

As for extracting headings from text of any format, nothing sensible came of it.
But don’t let the code disappear, let it lie here:

#!/bin/bash
n=$1
st=`sed -n ‘/^$/p’ $n| wc -l | awk ‘(print$1)’` #count the number of empty lines
sed -nr ‘/^.(100)/!p’ $n > /tmp/copy2$n #only interested in lines with less than 100 characters (headers are unlikely to be longer)
sed -n “1p” /tmp/copy2$n > ‘Headers’$n # We take out the first line (it will be the header)
#
tr 'n' '^' /tmp/copy$n # Change all hyphens to the ^ character
#
#Change the sequence of ^^^ (etc.) with double hyphens (resulting in an empty line)
#And change the single ^ to a single hyphen (without an empty line).
sed -i ‘s/^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^/nn/g’ /tmp/copy$n
sed -i ‘s/^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^/nn/g’ /tmp/copy$n
sed -i ‘s/^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^/nn/g’ /tmp/copy$n
sed -i ‘s/^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^/nn/g’ /tmp/copy$n
sed -i ‘s/^^^^^^^^^^^^^^/nn/g’ /tmp/copy$n
sed -i ‘s/^^^^^^^^^^^^^/nn/g’ /tmp/copy$n
sed -i ‘s/^^^^^^^^^^^^/nn/g’ /tmp/copy$n
sed -i ‘s/^^^^^^^^^^^/nn/g’ /tmp/copy$n
sed -i ‘s/^^^^^^^^^^/nn/g’ /tmp/copy$n
sed -i ‘s/^^^^^^^^^/nn/g’ /tmp/copy$n
sed -i ‘s/^^^^^^^^/nn/g’ /tmp/copy$n
sed -i ‘s/^^^^^^^/nn/g’ /tmp/copy$n
sed -i ‘s/^^^^^^/nn/g’ /tmp/copy$n
sed -i ‘s/^^^^^/nn/g’ /tmp/copy$n
sed -i ‘s/^^^^/nn/g’ /tmp/copy$n
sed -i ‘s/^^^/nn/g’ /tmp/copy$n
sed -i ‘s/^^/nn/g’ /tmp/copy$n
sed -i ‘s/^/n/g’ /tmp/copy$n
#
while [ $st -gt 0 ] #loop for the same number of times as empty terms.
do
st=$[$st-1]
sed -i ‘1,/^$/ d’ /tmp/copy$n #delete all lines up to the first empty line (including itself)
sed -n “1p” /tmp/copy$n >> ‘Headers ‘$n #add the remaining line to the file
done

By the way, this code coped well with comparing the files that were sent to me, but there were problems with real books.

No matter what system I have to tinker with the code, sooner or later it becomes too expensive to compare different versions of the source code. Here are easy, free utilities for finding differences in files for Linux, Windows and Mac. General launch format – file1 file2.

Under Windows, the task of comparing the contents of files (and even directories, which is sometimes not useless) copes well with WinMerge. Easy. Not tied to any IDE. It is written in Qt and is cross-platform - it should also run on niks. In addition to files, it can also compare the contents of directories (including based on regexp masks). You can add additional plugins.

WinMerge is a cross-platform utility for comparing files and more

Mac - opendiff. It is a separate XCode component. Standalone can be launched from the command line. It highlights the differences in pale gray, but by the way, it can show with arrows what has been added where. Can perform a merge (key -merge). If, in addition to the files being compared, you specify a common ancestor file after the -ancestor key, then the comparison will be made with it. Can compare folders.

opendiff utility - free file comparison tool on Mac

Linux – . Available on all platforms (Windows, Mac, Linux) due to the fact that it is also written in Qt. Can compare up to three files or directories. Supports the ability to merge changes, with editing support for manual conflict resolution.

kdiff3 utility - comparing two files

UPDATE 10/18/2013

If you work in Gnom on niks, then meld is a great choice. Integration with popular version control systems (Git, Subversion, etc.), merging tools - auto-merging, editing with catching current differences on the fly, syntax highlighting. There are ports for OS X Windows.

Well, as a last resort (if you can’t install anything third-party), an unsightly diff from the command line comes to the rescue (pre-installed on nix-like systems, including Macs and Solaris). Flexible. You can play with the settings for a long time and enthusiastically to be able to display differences based on a mask (-F), get a comparison in the usual two columns (key –side-by-side), etc. For large, unfamiliar files, I prefer output in a “contextual” format, when not only the changed lines are displayed, but also those adjacent to them.

For comparing more than two files, diff3 may be suitable.

To compare two or more files in Linux, there is the diff command. It can compare both individual files and directories. Let's look at the syntax, options of the diff command, and some usage examples.

diff command syntax

The diff command has the following syntax:

Diff [options] files-or-directories

We specify options and provide two or more files or directories that we need to compare.

diff command options

Let's look at the main options of the diff command. I will consider only those options that I use most often.

-E	Ignore changes caused by adding a tab character to the text.
-b	Ignore changes caused by adding spaces.
-w	Ignore changes that involve adding spaces and tabs.
-B	ignore new empty lines.
-p (or --show-c-function)	show the name of the C language function in which changes were found.
-y (or --side-by-side)	display the results in two columns.
-r	browse directories recursively.
-X FILE	exclude from the search files whose names match patterns in the FILE file.
-d (or --minimal)	try to find as few changes as possible (that is, exclude false positives).

Examples of using the diff command

Comparing two text files

To simply compare two text files named myfile1 and myfile2, run the command in the terminal:

Diff myfile1 myfile2

It is convenient to redirect the output of the diff command to a file with the diff extension. Most Linux text editors, such as Gedit, recognize this file and highlight its syntax. To direct the result of the comparison to the changes.diff file, you need to use the stream redirection symbol (>):

Diff myfile1 myfile2 > changes.diff

Comparison of directories containing text files

Let's look at an example of comparing two directories (mydir1 and mydir2) that contain text files. The main difference here from the example above is that we will add the -r option, which means it will recursively traverse files in directories.

Diff -r mydir1 mydir2 > changes.diff

Now let's assume that the directories in which we are comparing files contain a lot of "garbage" that we should not compare. Let's create a file excludeFiles and write into it the patterns and names of files that we should not compare. For example, the contents of excludeFiles might look like:

*.o ChangeLog* *.bak *.exe

Now let's tell the diff command to use our excludeFiles file when comparing directories:

Diff -r -X excludeFiles mydir1 mydir2 > changes.diff

Thus, we compare files whose names do not match the patterns in the excludeFiles file, for example, vasya.exe or ChangeLog12.

Let's add a few more options that are described above to improve the comparison result:

Diff -rwBd -X excludeFiles mydir1 mydir2 > changes.diff

We compare files in the mydir1 and mydir2 directories, ignoring changes due to adding blank lines, spaces, tabs, and also use filename patterns in excludeFiles to exclude unnecessary files from the comparison.

Conclusion

For more information on using the diff command on your Linux system, you can run the command:

Man diff

There are also programs that allow you to compare files using a graphical interface. For example, the Meld program, which visually shows where and what has changed in the files.

The Linux operating system has several software solutions for comparing the internal contents of two files using different methods. Of course, such a function will be incredibly useful for a web developer to compare two text files. For example, there are 2 css style files that you need to quickly compare to find the differences. Or see what's new in the updated PHP script.

A clear example from life:

So, in my case I need to compare 2 files bootstrap.css. This summer I corrected something in the styles of the bootstrap.css file (which could not be done, because for custom style edits you need to use a separate style.css). Because of this little thing, it’s problematic for me to upgrade from version 3.3.2 to bootstrap 3.3.5, because... the newer version has its own updated CSS file, when replaced, all my edits will disappear and part of the website design will “fly off”. Considering that there are more than 6000 lines of code in the bootstrap style file, it is absolutely impossible to view the changes yourself.

Comparing files with the diff utility in Linux:

To compare the files `bootstrap.css" and `bootstrap-original.css" (for clarity, I renamed the original file, adding the prefix -original to it), enter in the terminal: $ diff bootstrap.css bootstrap-original.css In the console we received the standard report the differences in these files. If you need to automatically save the report to a separate file on disk, send the output of the diff results to the file $ diff bootstrap.css bootstrap-original.css > сss-modifications.diff Now the entire report on file differences will be saved in the same folder under the name " сss-modifications.diff"However, this output does not clearly show where and what was added or removed by me. To more clearly see how the two files differ, you can use sdiff; The difference with this package is that it does not generate a diff report. By arranging both files in two columns, it immediately shows the differences in both files. `|" marks lines that differ from each other `" highlights lines that occur only in the second file.

The command syntax is similar to diff:

$ sdiff bootstrap.css bootstrap-original.css We output the differences to the console, and with the command: $ sdiff bootstrap.css bootstrap-original.css > сss-modifications.diff We write the entire report in a separate file. I would also advise adding the -t argument for a more readable diff report format (achieved by aligning the distances between tables with spaces). Otherwise, the standard report will open fine in gedit, but in Sublime it will “blur”: $ sdiff bootstrap.css bootstrap-original.css > сss-modifications.diff -t P.S. The possibilities for comparing files in Linux do not end there and you can even compare 3 files at the same time. To do this use the command To compare three files at once, use diff3. $ diff3 bootstrap.css bootstrap-original.css bootstrap-3.css > new.diff

Webmasters or website owners often need to compare two files based on content. From this article you will learn how to compare two files with each other. All methods known to me for comparing text files and scripts (html, css, php, and so on) are described here.

Method 1. Meld

Meld- a graphical tool for obtaining differences and merging two files, two directories. Meld is a visual file and directory comparison and merging tool for Linux. Meld is aimed primarily at developers. However, it may be useful to any user who needs a good tool for comparing files and directories.

In Meld you can compare two or three files, or two or three directories. You can view the working copy from popular version control systems such as CVS, Subversion, Bazaar-NG and Mercurial. Meld is available for most Linux distributions (Ubuntu, Suse, Fedora, etc.), and is present in their main repositories.

# aptitude install meld

Method 2: Comparing the contents of two files in WinMerge.

The free WinMerge program allows you to compare not only the contents of files, it also compares the contents of entire folders. WinMerge is an Open Source diff and merge tool for Windows. WinMerge can compare both files and folders, displaying the differences in a visual text form that is easy to understand and process.

After installation, open the menu item “File” - “Open”. Select files to compare. To do this, click on the “Browse” button and select a file. After selecting the files, click on the “OK” button.

You can also edit files in WinMerge. After closing the comparison window, the program will offer to save the changes to the files.

Method 3. diff

diff- file comparison utility that displays the difference between two files.

To compare directories use this command: $ diff -qr< current-directory> < backup-directory>

Method 4. Kompare

Kompare - displays differences between files. Can compare the contents of files or directories, as well as create, display and apply patch files. Kompare is a graphical diff utility that allows you to find differences in files and also merge them. Written in Qt and designed primarily for KDE. Here are its main features:

Supports multiple diff formats;

Support comparison of linux file and directories;

Support for viewing diff files;

Customizable interface;

Creating and applying patches to files.

Method 5. Comparing files in Total Commander

Supported Operating Systems: Windows

Total Commander has a file comparison tool by content, where you can not only compare content, but also edit it and copy it from one file to another.

After launching Total Commander - in one of the panels, select (Insert key) the first file for comparison - in the second panel, open the folder with the second file and place the cursor on it. Call the program for comparison: “Files→Compare by content.”

To make changes to the file, just click on the “Edit” button. The program offers copy and rollback, search and encoding functions. If you have made changes to the file, after closing the comparison window, you will be prompted to save the changes.

Method 6. Compare files in Notepad++

Supported operating systems: Windows, can run on Linux

Notepad++ cannot compare files. For this functionality to appear in Notepad++, you need to install the “Compare” plugin.

Launch the editor - go to the menu item “Plugins” - “Plugin Manager” - “Show Plugin Manager”. In the new window, select the “Compare” plugin and click the “Install” button.

After installing the plugin, open two files and select the menu “Plugins” - “Compare” - “Compare (Alt+D)”. The result of the file comparison will be presented in separate panels. A warning sign will appear opposite the lines in which differences are found.

Method 7: Comparing Files Using the Windows Command Prompt

Comparison using the Windows command line (cmd.exe) does not allow you to edit files, but you can simply compare the contents of files using this method.

To open the Windows command line, go to “Start” - “All Programs” - “Accessories” - “Command Prompt” or press the “Windows + R” key, type cmd and press the Enter key.

At the command prompt, enter the command:

fc / N path to the first file path to the second file