need help....

[aloke_666]

Well,

i have to write a shell script to accept two argument as input and display differences of files between two directories in "outfile".

anyone to help me....

[Dolda2000]

Don't write a shell script, use the "diff" command instead - that's what diff is for. Diff has several output format options, and personally I find that the one that you get with the -u option is easier to view. To get the difference between two directories, use a command like this:

diff -u <&#40;ls /dir/1&#41; <&#40;ls /dir/2&#41;

[aloke_666]

Thanks for everything.....

[Gnux]

diff -u <&#40;ls /dir/1&#41; <&#40;ls /dir/2&#41;

Hi
Just a question: we must use the parenthesis and the little < ?
Coz I use some time diff and I've never seen such a syntax;even in the man page I don't find this.
Could u explain it plz?
Thx

[lordnothing]

the < is the redirection operator.. it tells the shell to use the output from the following command as the input for the first.. the parentheses tell the shell to execute that command as a whole before redirecting the output.. so 'diff -u < (ls /usr/dir1) < (ls /usr/dir2)'

says:
use the result of 'ls /usr/dir1' and the result of 'ls /usr/dir2' as the input for diff -u

to redirect output somewhere, use > or >> (the double redirection operator means "append to")

[Dolda2000]

That's not precisely accurate... While < is a redirection operator, `<(cmd)' is a special construct. It doesn't give the output of the nested command as input to the top-level one. What it does is that it creates a named FIFO (or on Linux I believe it uses /proc/pid/fd or /dev/fd, but that's not important - the semantics are still the same), it connects the output of the nested command to that FIFO and gives the filename of the FIFO to the top-level command. That way, it allows the top-level command to open the FIFO manually.