


File::Compare(3p)Perl Programmers Reference GuidFile::Compare(3p)


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 han-
       dle.  It is exported from File::Compare by default.

       File::Compare::cmp is a synonym for File::Compare::com-
       pare.  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 argu-
       ment: 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 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 origi-
       nal documentation was written by Chip Salzenberg.
















2000-04-06                 perl v5.6.1                          1


