I have two big files (6GB each). They are unsorted, with linefeeds (\n) as separators. How can I diff them? It should take under 24h.
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4 Answers
The most obvious answer is just to use the diff command and it is probably a good idea to add the --speed-large-files parameter to it.
diff --speed-large-files a.file b.file
You mention unsorted files so maybe you need to sort the files first
sort a.file > a.file.sorted
sort b.file > b.file.sorted
diff --speed-large-files a.file.sorted b.file.sorted
you could save creating an extra output file by piping the 2nd sort output direct into diff
sort a.file > a.file.sorted
sort b.file | diff --speed-large-files a.file.sorted -
Obviously these will run best on a system with plenty of available memory and you will likely need plenty of free disk space too.
It wasn't clear from your question whether you have tried these before. If so then it would be helpful to know what went wrong (took too long etc.). I have always found that the stock sort and diff commands tend to do at least as well as custom commands unless there are some very domain specific properties of the files that make it possible to do things differently.
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2+1. You can omit all temporary files with named pipes. Use
mkfifoto create[ab].file.sortedbefore using them as output forsort. Put bothsorts with&in the background and use the both piped as filenames for diff.– krissiCommented Sep 16, 2010 at 11:45 -
15@krissi You can also accomplish the same effect using this syntax:
diff <(command 1) <(command 2)Commented Sep 16, 2010 at 14:12 -
7If someone like me wonders why
<(cmd1) <(cmd2)syntax works (as it sounds like redirecting standard input twice!), tryecho hello <(cmd1) <(cmd2). You'll see something likehello /dev/fd/63 /dev/fd/62which suddenly makes it clear ;)– alexCommented Sep 16, 2010 at 19:53 -
1Note that diff easily runs out of memory if you have really large files. For creating patches/deltas at least there are some other options: unix.stackexchange.com/a/77259/27186 though perhaps not for visually inspecting changes– unhammerCommented Mar 5, 2014 at 9:20
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5In my experience, the
--speed-large-filesoption does not help if you do not have enough RAM. Also, pre-sorting is not helpful if you have a multi-line record structure you wish to preserve. The options referred to above (by @unhammer) are interesting, but the output fromrdiffandbsdiffis rather binary. Installingbdifffrom the Heirloom Toolbox looks like a dauning task (requires Heirloom devtools, extinct header files, …). Is it really worth the effort? Are there other alternatives? Commented Feb 2, 2015 at 17:33
Sorting the inputs and telling the diff program it's inputs are sorted would provide a massive speed up. I don't know of any diff with an option like that but comm assumes sorted input and will be much quicker if it does enough for your purposes.
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4
commworked great for this, never heard of it before but apparently its in coreutils. Commented Nov 16, 2019 at 6:14
The bdiff tool can work on unsorted files much larger than the computer's RAM.
Use these steps once, to download and compile bdiff before using it the first time:
wget https://github.com/Arkanosis/Arkonf/raw/master/tools-src/bdiff.c && \
gcc -Wformat=0 -Wno-long-long bdiff.c -o bdiff && \
rm bdiff.c
To run bdiff and compare 2 files:
./bdiff a.file b.file
You might find it helpful to redirect the bdiff output to a file.
Thanks to @unhammer for the suggestion and the link to the Git repository.
I tried the solutions on this page when I had problems using diff on some large text files a couple of days ago, but didn't find anything that worked for me, so I wrote a file comparison program specifically to handle large text files. It seemed only fair to return here and let you know it's available. I've only used it myself and I'd appreciate if anyone else having problems with large text files could try it and report if it works - or doesn't - for you too. Code is at https://github.com/gtoal/bigfile-diff-compare
