C# - Comparing two CSV Files and giving an output

Question

Need a bit of help, I have two sources of information and the information is exported to two different CSV file\'s by different programs. They are supposed to include the sa

Answer 1

Assuming that the files are really supposed to be identical, right down to text qualifiers, ordering of rows, and number of rows contained in each file, the simplest approach may be to simply iterate through both files together and compare each line.

using (StreamReader f1 = new StreamReader(path1))
using (StreamReader f2 = new StreamReader(path2)) {

    var differences = new List();

    int lineNumber = 0;

    while (!f1.EndOfStream) {
        if (f2.EndOfStream) {
           differences.Add("Differing number of lines - f2 has less.");
           break;
        }

        lineNumber++;
        var line1 = f1.ReadLine();
        var line2 = f2.ReadLine();

        if (line1 != line2) {
           differences.Add(string.Format("Line {0} differs. File 1: {1}, File 2: {2}", lineNumber, line1, line2);
        }
    }

    if (!f2.EndOfStream) {
         differences.Add("Differing number of lines - f1 has less.");
    }
}