numericdiff(1) General Commands Manual 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 sec-
tions 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 dif-
ferences 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.
OPTIONS
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 -). Options can be abbreviated to
unique letters; the currently valid abbreviations for short names are
shown in parentheses.
-ainput (-a) 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 (-bin) OR -BInputFile File name
Second file to compare. If this option is not entered, the sec-
ond 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 (-m) OR -MaxDifferences Multiple floats
Maximum allowed difference for each column of input. A differ-
ence greater than the specified maximum for the particular col-
umn 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 spec-
ify the limits for each section. If there are more numeric sec-
tions than entries, the last entry of limits will be applied to
the remaining sections. (Successive entries accumulate)
-general (-g) 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 (-s) 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 (-h) OR -usage
Print help output
-StandardInput
Read parameter entries from standard input.
BUGS
Email bug reports to mast at colorado dot edu.
IMOD 5.2.0 numericdiff(1)