Question

I am having trouble with this simple task:

cat file | grep -E ^[0-9]+$ > file_grep
diff file file_grep

Problem is, I want to do this without file_grep

I have tried:

diff file `cat file | grep -E ^[0-9]+$`

and

diff file "`cat file | grep -E ^[0-9]+$`"

and a few other combinations 🙂 but I can’t get it to work.
I always get an error, when the diff gets extra argument which is content of file filtered by grep.

Something similar always worked for me, when I wanted to echo command outputs from within a script like this (using backtick escapes):

echo `ls`

Thanks

Answer 1

If you’re using bash:

diff file <(grep -E '^[0-9]+$' file)

The <(COMMAND) sequence expands to the name of a pseudo-file (such as /dev/fd/63) from which you can read the output of the command.

But for this particular case, ruakh’s solution is simpler. It takes advantage of the fact that - as an argument to diff causes it to read its standard input. The <(COMMAND) syntax becomes more useful when both arguments to diff are command output, such as:

diff <(this_command) <(that_command)