File::Compare(3perl) Perl Programmers Reference Guide File::Compare(3perl)
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::compare_text" does a line by line comparison of the two
files. It stops as soon as a difference is detected. compare_text()
accepts an optional third argument: This must be a CODE reference to a
line comparison function, which returns 0 when both lines are considered
equal. For example:
compare_text($file1, $file2)
is basically equivalent to
compare_text($file1, $file2, sub {$_[0] ne $_[1]} )
RETURN
"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
encountered.
AUTHOR
"File::Compare" was written by Nick Ing-Simmons. Its original
documentation was written by Chip Salzenberg.
perl v5.40.1 2026-08-30 File::Compare(3perl)
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