UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hi,
I wasn't sure whether to post this in the dummies or expert section, here's what I'm trying to do, but I suspect I'm missing the boat and should perhaps be using some of diff's builtin output functionality.

diff -yb --suppress-common-lines file1.js file2.js >> ~/results.txt

When I run this command without the ">> ~/results.txt" the two column output looks great, but the formatting looks terrible when I do put the output into results.txt

Any advice?

Sure. The terminal settings are doing the formatting you like. Try the script command

Example:

Code:

script foo.txt     # (this will give you a message about foo.txt)
diff -yb --suppress-common-lines file1.js file2.js
exit

This writes output from the tty just like it appears on the screen, to foo.txt

You will have to edit the file and get rid of the first and last lines foo.txt - at least on my UNIx that is true. You may also find embedded control characters that "make it pretty" and also make it pretty useless. I can not know what exactly you will see because there are too many variables - TERM settings, as an example.

What does the output in results.txt look like?

Jim,
Thanks!! I had never seen that command before (script), that worked perfectly! Also it's always great to learn a new tool, I'll find that useful in many situations I'm sure.

---------- Post updated at 01:36 PM ---------- Previous update was at 01:33 PM ----------

hanson44, you can see in the screenshot what a small part of results.txt looks like. Every line has a pipe "|", the pipes should all line up on the same column. Jim's solutions of using script worked great, it captured the terminal's perspective which is formatted nicely. So I just do that instead of putting it's output into results.txt.

I can't find any screenshot.

But sounds like the problem is solved.

Oops! My bad, here's the screenshot (for curiosity's sake - yeah, it is solved now). Thanks