Difference between two Texts (Python)

vegaseat 0 Tallied Votes 233 Views Share

Here we apply the module difflib to compare two texts line by line and show the lines of the first text that are different from the second text.

# find the difference between two texts
# tested with Python24   vegaseat  6/2/2005

import difflib

text1 = """The World's Shortest Books:
Human Rights Advances in China
"My Plan to Find the Real Killers" by OJ Simpson
"Strom Thurmond:  Intelligent Quotes"
America's Most Popular Lawyers
Career Opportunities for History Majors
Different Ways to Spell "Bob"
Dr. Kevorkian's Collection of Motivational Speeches
Spotted Owl Recipes by the EPA
The Engineer's Guide to Fashion
Ralph Nader's List of Pleasures
"""

text2 = """The World's Shortest Books:
Human Rights Advances in China
"My Plan to Find the Real Killers" by OJ Simpson
"Strom Thurmond:  Intelligent Quotes"
America's Most Popular Lawyers
Career Opportunities for History Majors
Different Ways to Sell "Bob"
Dr. Kevorkian's Collection of Motivational Speeches
Spotted Owl Recipes by the EPA
The Engineer's Guide to Passion
Ralph Nader's List of Pleasures
"""

# create a list of lines in text1
text1Lines = text1.splitlines(1)
print "Lines of text1:"
for line in text1Lines:
  print line,

print

# dito for text2
text2Lines = text2.splitlines(1)
print "Lines of text2:"
for line in text2Lines:
  print line,

print  

diffInstance = difflib.Differ()
diffList = list(diffInstance.compare(text1Lines, text2Lines))

print '-'*50
print "Lines different in text1 from text2:"
for line in diffList:
  if line[0] == '-':
    print line,
jimothy 0 Newbie Poster

Haha, funny book titles

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