UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hi I have two variables contining a set of near identical lines, i'd like to list the lines that differ? Prefereably i'd like not to save the variables into a file first.

i.e
var1
tag:val1
tag:val2
tag:val3

var2
tag:val1
tag:val4
tag:val3

i'd like the result to print out something like tag:val2 <> tag:val4.

I was thinking of using cmp to get the line numbers and then sed/awk to get the output.

I ideas on the 'best' solution to this?

thanks in advance.

are those variable present in same file??

Hi,

The variables are created from a command substitution which runs an application to describe a table structure.

What i want to do is compare the output from this application to compare the structure of two tables. The main aim is to describe the differences between the tables.

The variable thing is a bit misleading i suppose because I can just create temp files in /usr/tmp and then delete them? Is that the right place to put temp files?

Thinking about it it a bit more it would be useful to describe the new table as well as showing the differences.

so if i had two files
file1 - new table
colname:col1
coltype:col1
colsize:col1

colname:col2
coltype:col2
colsize:col2

and file2- old table
colname:col1
coltype:col1
colsize:col1

colname:col4
coltype:col4
colsize:col4

i'd like the result to be something like this:
col property file1 file2
colname col1 col1
coltype col1 col1
colsize col1 col1

colname col2 -
coltype col2 -
colsize col2 -

colname - col4
colname - col4
colsize - col4

Does this make any sense? I think it's probably an awk script?

sorry for changing the tack of the question.