File::Compare(3pm) Perl Programmers Reference Guide File::Compare(3pm)

NAME
       File::Compare - Compare files or filehandles

SYNOPSIS
               use File::Compare;

               if (compare("file1","file2") == 0) {
                   print "They're equal\n";
               }

DESCRIPTION
       The File::Compare::compare function compares the contents of two
       sources, each of which can be a file or a file handle.  It is exported
       from File::Compare by default.

       File::Compare::cmp is a synonym for File::Compare::compare.  It is
       exported from File::Compare only by request.

       File::Compare::comparetext does a line by line comparison of the two
       files. It stops as soon as a difference is detected. comparetext()
       accepts an optional third argument: This must be a CODE reference to a
       line comparison function, which returns 0 when both lines are consid-
       ered equal. For example:

           comparetext($file1, $file2)

       is basically equivalent to

           comparetext($file1, $file2, sub {$[0] ne $[1]} )

RREETTUURRNN
       File::Compare::compare and its sibling functions return 0 if the files
       are equal, 1 if the files are unequal, or -1 if an error was encoun-
       tered.

AUTHOR
       File::Compare was written by Nick Ing-Simmons.  Its original documenta-
       tion was written by Chip Salzenberg.



perl v5.8.8                       2001-09-21                File::Compare(3pm)