Kent What I need to do is find what should be common and see if it really is. I have two output files...The output files will have a bunch of systems stuff then the text of interest and then a bunch more systems stuff. The systems stuff may be different for each file but the text of interest will always have a fixed line in front of it and behind it.
The idea is to get the text of interest (using the known beginning and ending flags in the text) from each file and then check to make sure the text of interest is the same in both files. I have not done much text stuff so this is new territory for me. I will take a look at difflib. Thanks again John Ertl Simplified example of a text files. Sldfsdf Sdfsdfsf Sdfsdfsdfwefs Sdcfasdsgerg Vsadgfasgdbgdfgsdf -Beginning flag This Text Should be The Same in the other file. -Ending flag Sdfsdfsdfsd Sdfsdfsdfasd Sdfsadfsdf Sdfsadfasdf Sdfsdfasd Sdfasdf s -----Original Message----- From: Kent Johnson [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, January 28, 2005 15:23 Cc: Tutor@python.org Subject: Re: [Tutor] Diffing two files. You don't really say what you are trying to accomplish. Do you want to identify the common text, or find the pieces that differ? If the common text is always the same and you know it ahead of time, you can just search the lines of each file to find it. If you need to identify the common part, difflib might be useful. There is an example on this page of finding matching blocks of two sequences: http://docs.python.org/lib/sequencematcher-examples.html In your case the sequences will be lists of lines rather than strings (which are sequences of characters) Kent Ertl, John wrote: > All, > > I have two text files that should contain a section of text that is the > same. Luckily the section of text has a defined beginning and end. It > looks like the most straightforward thing would be to read the targeted text > from each file (only 50 lines or so) into lists and then compare the lists. > I would think I could use sets to find a unique list (hopefully there would > not be anything)...or I could do line by line comparison. Any advise on > what is the better method. Should I avoid the list comparison approach...is > there a built in way of comparing entire files instead of dealing explicitly > with the lines? > > Thanks, > > John Ertl > _______________________________________________ > Tutor maillist - Tutor@python.org > http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/tutor > _______________________________________________ Tutor maillist - Tutor@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/tutor _______________________________________________ Tutor maillist - Tutor@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/tutor