File::Compare(3) Perl Programmers Reference Guide File::Compare(3) NAME File::Compare - Compare files or filehandles SYNOPSIS use File::Compare; if(3,n) (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(1,n) or a file(1,n) 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 consid- ered 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(3,n) the files are equal, 1 if(3,n) the files are unequal, or -1 if(3,n) an error(8,n) was encoun- tered. AUTHOR File::Compare was written by Nick Ing-Simmons. Its original documenta- tion was written by Chip Salzenberg. perl v5.8.5 2001-09-21 File::Compare(3)