Hi,

I've got two files A and B

File A: File B:

1;2;a;4;5 1;2;1;a;4;7
3;2;b;d;s 3;3;1;b;5;1
e;2;c;s;w l;8;4;d;5;s
4;3;f;w;q p;9;r;c;4;d
e;3;q;w;q

What I need to be able to do is take column THREE from file A and compare it with column FOUR from file B.

i.e. File A (a;b;c)
File B (a;b;d;c)

The compare operation would ideally produce output like the following:

File B contains a record [d] that is not contained in File A
File A contains records [f;q] that are not contained in File B

I've used the compare command but the output is very difficult to comprehend.

Any help or pointers apperciated

This will do,

Compare.sh
#!/bin/sh
#cut column 3 from FileA and put it to FileA.tmp
cat FileA | cut -f3 -d";" > FileA.tmp
#cut column 4 from FileB and put it to FileB.tmp
cat FileB | cut -f4 -d";" > FileB.tmp
#compare FileA.tmp and FileB.tmp
diff FileA.tmp FileB.tmp
rm FileA.tmp FileB.tmp

sh Compare.sh
2a3
> d
4,5d4
< f
< q

-Om

Could anyone please explain what the 2a3 is for below?

Is there anyway to just get the differences without the 2a3 and 4,5d4


Thanks

something to start with:
nawk -f pen.awk fileA fileB

here's pen.awk: