UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hi everyone,
I have two files, and i want to detect the diffrent lines in these files. I tried to use the comm and diff commands, but I got that they are only comparing the lines in the same sequence number.
forexample: file1 file2
cat dog
dog elephant
elephant snake

I want to detect only cat in file1 and snake in file2, but the comm and diff commands will detect all the entries, as dog for example, is in diffrent lines.
Thanks for help.

Sort the files if it is not sorted

Code:

comm -3 file1 file2

sorting the files will not work in all cases, if I sorted file1 and file2, nothing will change.

A quick hack:

diff file1 file2 | egrep '^< |> ' | cut -c3- | uniq -u

Thanks Solfreak for your reply, but can you explain it for me, please.
Thanks

Does it work ?

Did you get the expected output?