in reply to quick and safe way to deal with this?

If this is on windows, you can use the 'fc' command to compare two files as well. Will also be faster than Perl, and does a few different things depending on how you want the files compared.

From win32 command prompt:

C:\>help fc Compares two files or sets of files and displays the differences betwe +en them FC [/A] [/C] [/L] [/LBn] [/N] [/OFF[LINE]] [/T] [/U] [/W] [/nnnn] [drive1:][path1]filename1 [drive2:][path2]filename2 FC /B [drive1:][path1]filename1 [drive2:][path2]filename2 /A Displays only first and last lines for each set of differ +ences. /B Performs a binary comparison. /C Disregards the case of letters. /L Compares files as ASCII text. /LBn Sets the maximum consecutive mismatches to the specified number of lines. /N Displays the line numbers on an ASCII comparison. /OFF[LINE] Do not skip files with offline attribute set. /T Does not expand tabs to spaces. /U Compare files as UNICODE text files. /W Compresses white space (tabs and spaces) for comparison. /nnnn Specifies the number of consecutive lines that must match after a mismatch. [drive1:][path1]filename1 Specifies the first file or set of files to compare. [drive2:][path2]filename2 Specifies the second file or set of files to compare.