Comparing 2 files

I’m very new to Ruby. I’m wondering if it is possible to compare 2 text
files and if those files have any differences in them that I can then
automatically send myself an email stating that the 2 files are not the
same. Thanks for any help. I tried using ruby_diff but I don’t think
it will work for my purposes.

Aaron

Aaron Scott wrote:

I’m very new to Ruby. I’m wondering if it is possible to compare 2 text
files and if those files have any differences in them that I can then
automatically send myself an email stating that the 2 files are not the
same. Thanks for any help. I tried using ruby_diff but I don’t think
it will work for my purposes.

Aaron

ri FileUtils#compare_file
------------------------------------------------- FileUtils#compare_file
compare_file(a, b)


 Returns true if the contents of a file A and a file B are
 identical.

   FileUtils.compare_file('somefile', 'somefile')  #=> true
   FileUtils.compare_file('/bin/cp', '/bin/mv')    #=> maybe false


 (also known as identical?, cmp)

Aaron Scott wrote:

I’m wondering if it is possible to compare 2 text
files and if those files have any differences in them that I can then
automatically send myself an email stating that the 2 files are not the
same.

The first thing you could try is to stat the files (builtin File::Stat
class) and see if there are any relevant differences between them (e.g.
size, mtime).

Or you could ask the OS to do a diff on the files.

Or you could read each file into a string and compare the two strings.

Or…

Thanks That worked perfectly.

Aaron Scott
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