UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Good evening

I need your help pease

I know there are 2 commands(diff, or cp) to compare files in a directory. but the question arises:

1. can i compare zip files or ive got to unzip them?
2. how can i compare 2 files from a local to a remote server? (is there any special commad or ive got to code?).

Id appreciate your help

Read this. You may find it useful:

The Power of Z Commands – Zcat, Zless, Zgrep, Zdiff Examples (link removed)

quickest way to compare files, regardless of location, is to do "ls -l" and/or "sum" on them and looking at the output ... if the output is exactly the same, it is very probable that they are the same ...

if still unsure,

i suggest you test item 1 yourself by creating 3 zip files -- 2 of which are exact copies (i.e., cp -p 1.zip 2.zip) and 1 different -- and checking output from diff and cmp ...


good luck!

Thanks for your explanationn both all you, its useful

But im still with de same doubt because:

1. zcommads is a powerful linux commad but no unix, but i need to compare n zip files in a local (Unix server) to Remote (Linus Server)

2. the 2nd explanation is OK but what if i have to compare at least 10 or more files from source to destination server, so it would be a kind of a ackward

Thanks again for your further help

create a script with a for loop (similar to code below) to connect to the remote servers and run a ssh command to look at "ls -l" output ... make sure you list your remote servers in the correct hostlist ...

Code:

#!/bin/sh

LIST='/home/user/hostlist'
USER='user'
FILE='/home/myzipfile'

hostname
ls -l $FILE
for HOST in `cat $LIST`
do
    ssh $USER@$HOST "hostname; ls -l $FILE"
done

exit 0