Recursive Directory Comparison and Export Differences

thanos1983 has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Hello again Monks,

I was trying to create a script that will recursively check for differences between directories and print them.

In UNIX the most common is diff -r test1/ test2/.

Sample of output:

$ diff -r test1/ test2/
diff -r test1/common/common.txt test2/common/common.txt
1c1
< This is a common line
---
> This is a common line.
Only in test2/common: common.txt~
Only in test1/: different1
Only in test2/: different2
[download]

I came across with multiple questions and suggestions for example (Directory comparison) and (Recursive Directory Comparison Tools).

I also found the File::DirCompare module. Sample of script and output:

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
use Data::Dumper;

sub check_dirs {
    die "Please provide 2 Directories!\n" unless ($#ARGV == 1);
    for (@_) { die "Input $_ is not a directory!\n" unless (-d $_) };
}

check_dirs(@ARGV);

use File::DirCompare;

# Simple diff -r --brief replacement
use File::Basename;
File::DirCompare->compare($ARGV[0], $ARGV[1], sub {
    my ($a, $b) = @_;
    if (! $b) {
    printf "Only in %s: %s\n", dirname($a), basename($a);
    } elsif (! $a) {
    printf "Only in %s: %s\n", dirname($b), basename($b);
    } else {
    print "Files $a and $b differ\n";
    }
              });

__END__
$ perl cmp.pl test1/ test2/
Files test1/common/common.txt and test2/common/common.txt differ
Only in test2/common: common.txt~
Only in test1: different1
Only in test2: different2
[download]

But it does tell provides you with the information of which file(s) are different.So I decided to write my own script.

Script and output:

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
use Text::Diff;
use File::Dircmp;
use Data::Dumper;

sub check_dirs {
    die "Please provide 2 Directories!\n" unless ($#ARGV == 1);
    for (@_) { die "Input $_ is not a directory!\n" unless (-d $_) };
}

check_dirs(@ARGV);
my @dircmp = dircmp($ARGV[0], $ARGV[1]);

my @diff;
foreach my $element (@dircmp) {
    if ($element =~ /^Files/) {
    my @tmp = split / /, $element;
    push @diff, diff $tmp[1] => $tmp[3];
    }
}
print Dumper \@dircmp if (@dircmp);
print @diff if (@diff);

__END__

$ perl cmp.pl test1/ test2/
$VAR1 = [
          'Only in test1/: different1',
          'Only in test2/: different2',
          'Only in test2//common: common.txt~',
          'Files test1//common/common.txt and test2//common/common.txt
+ differ'
        ];
--- test1//common/common.txt    Wed Mar  8 11:41:08 2017
+++ test2//common/common.txt    Wed Mar  8 11:44:35 2017
@@ -1 +1 @@
-This is a common line
+This is a common line.
[download]

So my question is, have a missed something? Anyone knows any other module that I could use? I am not really happy the way my output is printed is there anything that I could do to make it better?

Thanks in advance for our time and effort reading and replying to my question.

Seeking for Perl wisdom...on the process of learning...not there...yet!

Comment on Recursive Directory Comparison and Export Differences Select or Download Code

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Recursive Directory Comparison and Export Differences by Corion (Patriarch) on Mar 08, 2017 at 12:54 UTC
I wrote diff-servers.pl - Diff directory trees across machines for that task. In the end, it isn't a hard task if you leverage some existing modules like Algorithm::Diff and Net::Ssh2, but I'm not aware of an all-in-one module that does file tree diffing.	[reply]
Re: Recursive Directory Comparison and Export Differences by shmem (Chancellor) on Mar 09, 2017 at 11:52 UTC
So my question is, have a missed something? hmm... the output of your last script `$VAR1 = [ 'Only in test1/: different1', 'Only in test2/: different2', 'Only in test2//common: common.txt~', 'Files test1//common/common.txt and test2//common/common.txt + differ' ]; --- test1//common/common.txt Wed Mar 8 11:41:08 2017 +++ test2//common/common.txt Wed Mar 8 11:44:35 2017 @@ -1 +1 @@ -This is a common line +This is a common line.` [download] is very similar to the output `diff -ru` produces: `qwurx [shmem] ~/tmp/diff> diff -ur test1 test2 diff -ur test1/common/common.txt test2/common/common.txt --- test1/common/common.txt 2017-03-09 12:28:15.215474776 +0100 +++ test2/common/common.txt 2017-03-09 12:28:38.639837796 +0100 @@ -1 +1 @@ -This is a common line +This is a common line. Only in test2/common: common.txt~ Only in test1: different1 Only in test2: different2` [download] and it is trivial to filter that output to resemble that of your script. Perhaps you want to tell us what kind of output you are aiming for, and the purpose of it all? perl -le'print map{pack c,($-++?1:13)+ord}split//,ESEL'	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: Recursive Directory Comparison and Export Differences by Anonymous Monk on Mar 08, 2017 at 17:24 UTC
don't reinvent wheels :) vagrant@localhost ~/foo $ mkdir bar vagrant@localhost ~/foo $ mkdir baz vagrant@localhost ~/foo $ echo test > bar/test vagrant@localhost ~/foo $ echo test2 > baz/test vagrant@localhost ~/foo $ echo foo > bar/foo vagrant@localhost ~/foo $ cd bar/ vagrant@localhost ~/foo/bar $ git init Initialized empty Git repository in /home/vagrant/foo/bar/.git/ vagrant@localhost ~/foo/bar $ git add . vagrant@localhost ~/foo/bar $ git commit -m'init' [master (root-commit) e360fb9] init 2 files changed, 2 insertions(+) create mode 100644 foo create mode 100644 test vagrant@localhost ~/foo/bar $ mv .git/ ../baz/ vagrant@localhost ~/foo/bar $ cd ../baz/ vagrant@localhost ~/foo/baz $ git diff diff --git a/foo b/foo deleted file mode 100644 index 257cc56..0000000 --- a/foo +++ /dev/null @@ -1 +0,0 @@ -foo diff --git a/test b/test index 9daeafb..180cf83 100644 --- a/test +++ b/test @@ -1 +1 @@ -test +test2	[reply]