When comparing several files is there a way to find values unique to each file?

File1

a
b
c
d

a
b
t

a
c
h

Why not uniq or comm? They should be available on all Unixes and Linuxes.

Assuming that this is small scale with small text files. We can find the unique values in a list of files and then reverse lookup each unique value in the original files.
For example:

cat filename*|sort|uniq -u | while read line
do
       echo "Unique value found : ${line} : in file"
       echo "`grep -lx "${line}" filename*`"
done

Hi.

If I needed to get this done quickly, I would make use of the usual *nix commands. I would add the file name to each line, then manipulate the results so that I had a single file, sort it, collect the lines on which the data items were the same, and then filter for lines which had exactly 2 fields. For example:

#!/usr/bin/env bash

# @(#) s2	Demonstrate solve problem of unique values with collection.

# Infrastructure details, environment, commands for forum posts. 
set +o nounset
LC_ALL=C ; LANG=C ; export LC_ALL LANG
echo ; echo "Environment: LC_ALL = $LC_ALL, LANG = $LANG"
echo "(Versions displayed with local utility \"version\")"
c=$( ps | grep $$ | awk '{print $NF}' )
version >/dev/null 2>&1 && s=$(_eat $0 $1) || s=""
[ "$c" = "$s" ] && p="$s" || p="$c"
version >/dev/null 2>&1 && version "=o" $p awk
# set -o nounset

rm -f t1 t2
for file in data*
do
  sed "s/$/\t$file/" $file >> t1
done

echo
echo " Sample at beginning & end of $( wc -l < t1) lines in combined data file:"
head -3 t1
echo ...
tail -3 t1

echo
echo " Collector script:"
cat collect

echo
echo " Results for lines with 2 fields:"
sort t1 |
./collect |
tee t2 |
awk ' NF == 2 '

echo
echo " Intermediate file from awk collector script:"
cat t2

exit 0

% ./s2

Environment: LC_ALL = C, LANG = C
(Versions displayed with local utility "version")
OS, ker|rel, machine: Linux, 2.6.26-2-amd64, x86_64
Distribution        : Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 
GNU bash 3.2.39
GNU Awk 3.1.5

 Sample at beginning & end of 10 lines in combined data file:
a	data1
b	data1
c	data1
...
a	data3
c	data3
h	data3

 Collector script:
#!/usr/bin/env sh

# @(#) collect	Demonstrate collection script, awk.

FILE="$1"

# Use nawk or /usr/xpg4/bin/awk on Solaris.

awk '
BEGIN	{ FS = OFS = "\t" ; previous = "" ; line = "" ; first = "true"}
first == "true" { first = "false" ; previous = $1 ; line = $0 ; next }
$1 == previous	{ line = line "\t" $2 ; next }
		{ print line ; previous = $1 ; line = $0 }
END	{ print line }
' $FILE

exit 0

 Results for lines with 2 fields:
d	data1
h	data3
t	data2

 Intermediate file from awk collector script:
a	data1	data2	data3
b	data1	data2
c	data1	data3
d	data1
h	data3
t	data2