How to count differences between two files on linux?

Question

I need to work with large files and must find differences between two. And I don\'t need the different bits, but the number of differences.

To find the number of dif

Answer 1

If you're dealing with files with analogous content that should be sorted the same line-for-line (like CSV files describing similar things) and you would e.g. want to find 2 differences in the following files:

File a:    File b:
min,max    min,max
1,5        2,5
3,4        3,4
-2,10      -1,1

you could implement it in Python like this:

different_lines = 0
with open(file1) as a, open(file2) as b:
    for line in a:
        other_line = b.readline()
        if line != other_line:
            different_lines += 1