[solved] why does "diff" always return "1"?!?

[DiTBho]

yup, but at least it's not buggy (well, ok, because - it, bash, and their friends - have been already updated)

[bson]

Thanks. Diff is used in a complex Bash script that needs to check if two files are equal or not, and in case not it needs to report differences. My script allocates the output of Diff in a variable to have it ready.

cmp is faster and if it were me I'd use a pattern like:

Code: [Select]

if ! cmp $FILE1 $FILE2 ; then
  echo '***' $FILE1 differs from $FILE2 '***'
  diff $FILE1 $FILE2
  exit 1
fi
This way, in the normal case where they don't differ you can quickly and silently move on and do nothing.  Then use diff to produce the actual message to print if they do differ.