How to use cmp() function to compare 2 files?

[Dan Bishop]

On Feb 26, 10:09 pm, "ying... at gmail.com" <ying... at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> i have 2 files which are different (1 line difference):
> $ diff groupresult20070226190027.xml groupresult20070226190027-2.xml
> 5c5
> < x:22 y:516 w:740 h:120 area:
> ---
>
> > x:22 y:516 w:740 h:1202 area:
>
> But when I use the cmp() function to compare 2 files, it return "1",
>
> $ python Python 2.4.3 (#1, Oct 23 2006, 14:19:47)
> [GCC 4.1.1 20060525 (Red Hat 4.1.1-1)] on linux2
> Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.>>> cmp("groupresult20070226190027.xml", "groupresult20070226190027-2.xml")
>
> 1
>
> Can you please tell me why?

Because '.' > '-' (character 25 of each string).

But this is comparing the filenames, which isn't what you want to do.

> And how can I compare the content of 2
> files in python?

Use the difflib module.