On Tuesday 6 May 2008 07:53, Nathan Coulter wrote: > Looking for a simple ways to output the byte at which two strings differ. > Here is one: > > cmp <(echo "hello") <(echo "help") | cut -d' ' -f5 | tr -d , > > Any other suggestions?
I can't see how this pertains to gnu.bash.bug, however try this: echo 'hello help' | sed 's/\([^ ]*\)[^ ]* \1.*/\1/' | wc -m (this exploits the fact that a newline is appended at the end, so wc sees an additional character, and gives the expected result). If the strings can have spaces in them, then use a different separator. -- D.