Question

I’d like to use diff Unix command to compare between output files.

However , sometimes there is a redundant “\n” in the end of the output , but I still want to consider files as the same.

say I’ve this output:

XXXXX
XXXXX

and:

XXXXX
XXXXX\n

(cant get it to show an empty line , so i wrote \n)

I’d like to able to use unix diff command stil consider these two outputs as equal.

to make myself clear , i only want to ignore last enter (“\n”) only. the rest shouldn’t be ignored.

for example , these two outputs should not be considred equal:

XXXXX

XXXXX

and

XXXXX
XXXXX

thanks

Answer 1

Have you tried the -b option:

-b, --ignore-space-change
          ignore changes in the amount of white space

http://unixhelp.ed.ac.uk/CGI/man-cgi?diff

If you only wish to exclude the last possible new line try removing it with sed before piping the result to diff:

sed '${/^$/d}' file1 | diff - file2