Ignore Lines and line Number when comparing two text files.

**Chris** · 01-Feb-2017, 03:08 PM

Yes, you can do this in Beyond Compare 4.

Open Beyond Compare.

Open "Tools > File Formats".
Click + to create a new format.
Select "Text Format" as the type.
Enter a mask that matches the extension of your files, such as *.txt.
Go to the Grammar tab and click + in the top half of the tab.
Name the element "10digits".
Category: Basic
Text matching: \d{10}
Check regular expression.
Save the format.
If you want to give the format a specific name, right click on it in the format list and select Rename.

Open your files in the Text Compare.
If the file mask matches the format you defined, it should list "Format name" in the dropdown below the left and right path edit.
Click the Rules toolbar button (referee icon).
Uncheck "Everything else" and leave "10digits" checked.
Click OK.

If "View > Ignore Unimportant Differences" is turned on, then only differences in the 10 digit numbers will be shown.

In the examples you listed, the text is also out of order. To ignore line ordering, you can make Beyond Compare sort your files before they are compared. To turn on sorting, open "Tools > File Formats". Select the format you just created. Go to the Conversion tab. Change the dropdown from None to Text Sort, then save the changes.

After you turn on all of the above settings, Beyond Compare will sort your files before comparison, then it will only show differences in 10 digit numbers.

**sreedhar** · 01-Feb-2017, 03:47 PM

Hi Chris,

Thank you very much for the input, I really appreciate it. By following the above mentioned steps I solved 50% of the requirement. But my complete requirement is like, line 27 (highlighted with yellow) in the below screenshot is exactly the same in both file 1 and file 2. But if you look at line 2 in file 1(left side) the 10 digit number 1234324569 matches with the 10 digit number in line 7 of the file 2 ( right side). Similarly 10 digit number in line 7 in file 1 matches with the 10 digit number in line 2 of file 2 in the right side. Even though they are in a different line number in both the files I want to see if they match. Your help is much appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

Attached Files

**sreedhar** · 02-Feb-2017, 03:45 PM

If the above response was not clear. Here is it simplified.

Can we compare the 10-Digit number in File 1 to the same number in a Different row in File 2

**Chris** · 03-Feb-2017, 10:42 AM

You need to turn on sorting in your file format as I described in my earlier post.

In the examples you listed, the text is also out of order. To ignore line ordering, you can make Beyond Compare sort your files before they are compared. To turn on sorting, open "Tools > File Formats". Select the format you just created. Go to the Conversion tab. Change the dropdown from None to Text Sort, then save the changes.

Ignore Lines and line Number when comparing two text files.

Ignore Lines and line Number when comparing two text files.

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment