Boulder Laboratory for 3-Dimensional Electron Microscopy of Cells

NUMERICDIFF(1)							NUMERICDIFF(1)

NAME
  numericdiff - compare numeric entries between two text files

SYNOPSIS
  numericdiff [options] input_file_A [input_file_B]

DESCRIPTION
  Numericdiff compares the numeric contents of two text files.  It scans
  through each file, identifying sections of purely numeric text and sections
  with non-numeric text.  Within a section of numeric text, it reads the
  numbers from each file and finds the maximum absolute value of the
  difference between numbers in each column.  These maxima are reported for
  each numeric section, and if limits for the maximum differences are entered,
  the program reports that there are differences above the limits and exits
  with a non-zero status.

  The lines in a section may have different numbers of columns.  The two files
  can differ in the number of lines in a numeric section; the extra lines in
  one file will be ignored.  Sections of non-numeric text can also be
  different length between the two files.  However, there is no attempt to
  match the text in non-numeric sections, so both files must match in the way
  that they alternate between numeric and non-numeric text.

  Numericdiff uses the PIP package for input exclusively (see the manual page
  for pip).  The following options can be specified either as command line
  arguments (with the -) or one per line in a command file or parameter file
  (without the -):

 -ainput OR -AInputFile   File name
    First file to compare.  If this option is not entered, the first
    non-option argument will be used for this input file.

 -binput OR -BInputFile   File name
    Second file to compare.  If this option is not entered, the second
    non-option argument will be used for this input file, if it exists.  If
    this file is not specified at all, a backup file to A will be used (the A
    filename with ~ appended).

 -max OR -MaxDifferences   Multiple floats
    Maximum allowed difference for each column of input.  A difference greater
    than the specified maximum for the particular column will cause the
    program to exit with a non-zero status.  In addition, if the -big option
    is selected, the two lines that differ will be printed.  The number of
    maximum values entered determines how many columns are tested; columns
    past that number are ignored.  If the input files have multiple sections
    of numeric data, this option can be entered multiple times to specify the
    limits for each section.  If there are more numeric sections than entries,
    the last entry of limits will be applied to the remaining sections.
    (Successive entries accumulate)

 -general OR -GeneralFormat
    Print maximum differences in general format (up to 6 numbers per line, 5
    decimal places, exponential notation for small or large numbers).  The
    default is to use a fixed format (f10.4) that allows up to 8 numbers per
    line.

 -strip OR -StripLinesWith   Text string
    Convert lines containing the specified text to numeric lines.  This entry
    allows one type of line with labeled numeric output to be converted into
    pure numeric output and compared between the files.

 -big OR -BigDifferenceOutput
    Output the pair of input lines whenever one of the differences is greater
    than the maximum difference specified with the -max option.

 -help OR -usage
    Print help output

  -StandardInput
     Read parameter entries from standard input.