Compare files bash shell

Collectives on Stack Overflow. Learn more. Compare 2 files with shell script Ask Question. Asked 10 years, 6 months ago. Active 10 years, 6 months ago. Viewed 11k times. I was trying to find the way for knowing if two files are the same, and found this post Parsing result of Diff in Shell Script I used the code in the first answer, but i think it's not working or at least i cant get it to work properly Could someone give me a hand, or explain what's happening?

Thanks so much; peixe. Improve this question. In the same script I will modify the values of both the variables to verify less than equal to operator.

Bash is still one of the most used programming language, although we don't prefer bash for writing complicated scripts but for normal scripts such as taking backup for automating certain day to day tasks, bash is still preferred across Linux users. Comparing integer values in variables is something which is required to be performed in most of the shell scripts. Lastly I hope the steps from the tutorial guide to understand different comparison operators for integers on Linux was helpful.

So, let me know your suggestions and feedback using the comment section. I have used below external references for this tutorial guide Comparison Operators Arithmetic Expression. If my articles on GoLinuxCloud has helped you, kindly consider buying me a coffee as a token of appreciation.

Show Threads. Show Posts. Shell Programming and Scripting. Script to compare file sizes. Registered User. Join Date: Apr I need to write a bash script larger X Y that compares the sizes of two specified files X and Y, and reports which file is larger. For example, if X is larger, the output should be "File X is larger", while if Y is larger, the output should be "File Y is larger". If the files are exactly the same size, the output should be "File X and File Y are exactly the same size".

If fewer than two command line arguments are specified, an appropriate error message should be given. Last edited by fpmurphy; at PM..

Join Date: Aug Is this homework? Anyway, look at the stat command to know the size of a file: Code :. Code :. We will now create a script for doing numeric comparison, but before we do that we need to know the parameters that are used to compare numerical values.

Below mentioned is the list of parameters used for numeric comparisons. For doing strings comparisons, parameters used are.

This can be a problem when these symbols are used in our scripts, so what can be done to address this issue. Solution is simple , when using any of these symbols in scripts, they should be used with escape character i.