Your examples didn't make this clear... what would you want as output if your two input files were:

  -- FILE 1 --        -- FILE 2 --
Monk apple one       Monk apple one
Punk apple two       Punk peach two
John peach three     John peach two
Jane plum  three     Jack plum  three
[download]

The question is: Which of the following best describes your task?

• The comparison consists of using just the first column as the "key" field, and you just want to print the keys that are unique to one file or the other.
• The comparison involves whole lines -- the first column of a line is printed if the other file does not contain an exact match for the whole line.

If your task is like the first one, you could check out a command line utility script that I posted here. If it's the latter, a different approach would be needed.

---

---

Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!

Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.

Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.

Please read these before you post! —

• How do I compose an effective node title?
• How do I post a question effectively?
• Markup in the Monastery

Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:

a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr

You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)

	For:		Use:
	&		&
	<		&lt;
	>		&gt;
	[		&#91;
	]		&#93;

Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?

See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.