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Numdiff

Numdiff is a program with the capability to appropriately compare files containing numerical fields (and not only). By default, Numdiff assumes the fields are separated by white spaces (blanks, horizontal tabulations and newlines), but the user can also specify its list of separators. When you compare a couple of such files, what you want to obtain usually is a list of the numerical fields in the second file which numerically differ from the corresponding fields in the first file. Well known tools like diff, cmp or wdiff can not be used to this purpose: they can not recognize whether a difference between two numerical fields is only due to the notation or is actually a difference of numerical values. Moreover, you could desire to neglect all small numerical differences too. However, programs like diff and wdiff can not be used to ignore small numerical differences, since they do not even know what a numerical difference is.

Last updated 5 Sep, 2006