Sort two files and compare, in one shot
At least once a week, I find myself wishing I could sort two files and compare them in one shot, from the commandline, without creating intermediate files. Today I’m glad to say I found my answer.
Here are two examples:
diff -y <(sort file1) <(sort file2)
comm -3 <(sort file1) <(sort file2)
See this wikipedia entry for a comparison of the diff and comm commands.
Better consoles for cygwin shells
Let’s face it, cygwin is neat but the console it launches is lame. I’m not referring to bash, but rather the normal — and thus lame — Windows command box. Things just don’t feel right… some keys don’t work as expected and forget about making the window wider. Fortunately, there is a better way!
Rather, I should say there are better ways: puttycyg and mintty.
puttycyg is a patched version of putty with support for cygwin. mintty is … well, yeah, it’s based on putty, too.
If you use cygwin, you owe it to yourself to try one or both of them immediately. And by that I mean stop reading and start downloading. Now.
