Here's an example of Algorithm::Diff. Since you didn't show what the output should look like, I am only printing to STDOUT. Items only in the first file are shown in red, and items only in the second file are shown in green, where "item" is either a line, a word (non-whitespace), or a character based on the switch provided.

Note that most of the code is just handling options. 

#!/usr/bin/perl

# https://perlmonks.org/?node_id=1228795

use strict;                     # color diff
use warnings;
use Algorithm::Diff qw(traverse_sequences);
use Term::ANSIColor;
use Getopt::Long;

GetOptions
  'lines'     => \(my $lines),
  'chars'     => \(my $chars),
  'words'     => \(my $words),
  'help'      => \(my $help),
  or die help("bad option");

sub help
  {
  print <<END;
@_

--lines         diff by lines (default)
--chars         diff by characters
--words         diff by words (non-whitespace)
--help          help
END
  exit;
  }

$help and help("options");
@ARGV == 2 or die "usage: $0 -h -l -w -c oldfilename newfilename\n";

my $regex = $chars ? qr/./s : $words ? qr/\S+|\h+|\n/ : qr/.*/s;
my @from = do { local @ARGV = shift; map /$regex/g, <> };
my @to   = do { local @ARGV = shift; map /$regex/g, <> };

traverse_sequences( \@from, \@to,
  {
  MATCH     => sub {print $from[shift()]},
  DISCARD_A => sub {print color('red'), $from[shift()], color 'reset'}
+,
  DISCARD_B => sub {print color('green'), $to[pop()], color 'reset'},
  } );

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In reply to Re: comparing any two text files and writing the difference to a third file by tybalt89
in thread comparing any two text files and writing the difference to a third file by balanunni

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