Entry
File: Compare: Operating system: Microsoft: Windows:MSDOS: How to compare 2 files? [fc / equal]
Nov 18th, 2003 10:02
Knud van Eeden,
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--- Knud van Eeden --- 18 November 2003 - 18:27 pm -------------------
File: Compare: Operating system: Microsoft: Windows:MSDOS: How to
compare 2 files? [fc / equal]
---
Steps: Overview:
1. -Goto MSDOS
2. -on the command line, type the command
fc myfirstfile mysecondfile
3. -if the files are equal that will
(possibly after a while) return
to the command line showing
'FC: no differences encountered'
---
---
To compare 2 files to check if they are
completely equal, you can use the MSDOS
command fc.exe
(to be found e.g. in
c:\windows\system32\fc.exe
or
c:\windows\command\fc.exe)
---
Binary files with extensions like:
.EXE
.COM
.SYS
.OBJ
.LIB
.BIN
are compared byte for byte, otherwise,
comparison is line by line.
---
Comparing text files:
To compare text files
FILE1 and FILE2, type:
fc myfirstfile mysecondfile blank areas must match
character for character
fc myfirstfile mysecondfile /w blank areas can be of
different sizes
fc myfirstfile mysecondfile /a show only start and end
text on mismatches
---
If there are mismatches in this text ASCII files this might show as:
***** first file
start
...
...
end
***** second file
start
...
...
end
*****
---
---
Comparing binary files:
To compare program files myfirstfile.EXE and mysecondfile.EXE,
type:
fc myfirstfile.exe mysecondfile.exe
---
If there are mismatches in this binary files this might show as:
AAAAAAAA BB BB
where:
A = Hex location from start of file.
and
B = Hex characters in first and second files.
---
---
To see more information, type
fc /?
This will show a screen similar to the following:
+---------------------------------------------------------------------+
|Compares two files or sets of files and displays the differences |
| between them |
| |
| |
|FC [/A] [/C] [/L] [/LBn] [/N] [/OFF[LINE]] [/T] [/U] [/W] [/nnnn] |
| [drive1:][path1]filename1 [drive2:][path2]filename2 |
|FC /B [drive1:][path1]filename1 [drive2:][path2]filename2 |
| |
| /A Displays only first and last lines for each set of |
| differences. |
| /B Performs a binary comparison. |
| /C Disregards the case of letters. |
| /L Compares files as ASCII text. |
| /LBn Sets the maximum consecutive mismatches to the specified|
| number of lines. |
| /N Displays the line numbers on an ASCII comparison. |
| /OFF[LINE] Do not skip files with offline attribute set. |
| /T Does not expand tabs to spaces. |
| /U Compare files as UNICODE text files. |
| /W Compresses white space (tabs and spaces) for comparison.|
| /nnnn Specifies the number of consecutive lines that must |
| matc h |
| after a mismatch. |
| [drive1:][path1]filename1 |
| Specifies the first file or set of files to compare. |
| [drive2:][path2]filename2 |
| Specifies the second file or set of files to compare. |
+---------------------------------------------------------------------+
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