Command to compare two files starting from first line till Mid

[Abdul Mohd]

I need help on Unix command or script.
I need to two compare two files as follows: -
file1 contains 500 recs
file2 contain 1500 recs

I need to get the different between file 1 & 2 and to be writen 1000 recs in file3. but the tricky is the in both files don't want to compare the whole line. the line length of 640 and I want to compare only 630 length.

Please help me.

Waiting for your kind reply.

[Jesper de Jong]

Cady Cady, welcome to JavaRanch. Please check your private messages. You can see them by clicking My Private Messages.

[Andrew Monkhouse]

Does file2 contain all the records that are in file1? If so, then a simple script can look for the partial line in file2 and if it is not there then grab it from file2:

andrews-computer:~/abdul andrew$ cat file1 && echo 
Act in the valley so that you need not fear those who stand on the hill. - Danish proverb
Don't go around saying the world owes you a living; the world owes you nothing; it was here first. - Mark Twain [Samuel Langhornne Clemens] (1835-1910)
Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example. - Mark Twain [Samuel Langhornne Clemens] (1835-1910)
If you can't describe what you are doing as a process, you don't know what you're doing. - W. Edwards Deming
It's kind of fun to do the impossible. - Walt Disney
Life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from insufficient premises. - Samuel Butler (1612-1680)
Minds are like parachutes. They only function when they are open. - Sir James Dewar, Scientist (1877-1925)
The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you've got it made. -  Groucho Marx (1890-1977)
 
andrews-computer:~/abdul andrew$ cat file2 && echo
Act in the valley so that you need not fear those who stand on the hill. ==> Danish proverb
Don't go around saying the world owes you a living; the world owes you nothing; it was here first. ==> Mark Twain [Samuel Langhornne Clemens] (1835==>1910)
If you can't describe what you are doing as a process, you don't know what you're doing. ==> W. Edwards Deming
Life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from insufficient premises. ==> Samuel Butler (1612==>1680)
Minds are like parachutes. They only function when they are open. ==> Sir James Dewar, Scientist (1877==>1925)
The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you've got it made. ==>  Groucho Marx (1890==>1977)
 
andrews-computer:~/abdul andrew$ cut -c-35 file1 | while read LINE;do if [ `egrep -c "$LINE" file2` -eq 0 ];then grep "$LINE" file1;fi;done
Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example. - Mark Twain [Samuel Langhornne Clemens] (1835-1910)
It's kind of fun to do the impossible. - Walt Disney

If there are too many records to do this, then you might want to ensure that both files are sorted then run either a more advanced script (awk or perl) or write a Java program to do the work for you.

Regards, Andrew

[Charles Lyons]

run either a more advanced script (awk or perl) or write a Java program to do the work for you.

Or of course a C/C++ app if you have the resources to do so. Java has such large overheads on startup and memory consumption that it usually isn't suited for these sorts of small, fast jobs (it is however excellent for portable long running processes where RAM isn't a constraint). Whenever I have to parse a lot of files in some custom way, it's always faster (than grep, awk and certainly perl) to write a native program to do it. I'll use a shell script if the files are small and I need a quick or rapidly portable solution, but it's C/C++ otherwise... Compiling on Linux is dead easy too---just install gcc/g++ via your package manager and run it on the source files. It's almost as easy on Windows with MinGW, but programming with VC++/VS is quite a different experience.