My first thought would be just to take md5sums of the files and see if they match. That is a fast operation, and won't tax the system. But it assumes the lines will be in the same position, maybe you can sort them first, before doing the md5sum?

If they don't match, open them and take a diff. See Seeking guidance on how to approach a task and Algorithm::Diff and here is a simple method using the hash count method described above. 

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;

open (FILE1, '<', 'file1.txt') or die "Unable to open file1.txt for re
+ading : $!";
open (FILE2, '<', 'file2.txt') or die "Unable to open file2.txt for re
+ading : $!";

my %lines;
while ( <FILE1> ) {
    chomp;
    $lines{$_}++
}
while ( <FILE2> ) {
    chomp;
    $lines{$_}++
}
open (FILE3, '>', 'file3.txt') or die "Unable to open file3.txt for wr
+iting : $!";

for ( keys %lines ) {
    next if $lines{$_} > 1;
    print FILE3 "$_\n";
}

[download]
I'm not really a human, but I play one on earth.
Old Perl Programmer Haiku ................... flash japh

In reply to Re: Matching two files real time by zentara
in thread Matching two files real time by chkin

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • 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! —
  • 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:
    & &amp;
    < &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.