Shell Programming and Scripting

Hi,

I want to compare two tables fieldwise using shell script. Can anyone help me regarding the same.
The approach which i tried is to first move the two tables in simple txt file where each field is now seperated by space. But i can't retrive each field with "space" as a seperator b'coz there are some fields like say "Description" which have content with spaces for ex. "[X] or more external movement" is the value in that field. Thus i cannot use space as a seperator.

Can any one help me in seperating each field and then compare that two files i.e two tables..

Thanks,
Durwas

There are simple database command to find the difference.

Example: if you are using oracle you can use the command:

select * from A minus select * from B;

(A and B be the table name)
...

from shell script if you want to find : you would need to think of some delimeter which doesn't occur in your table data...