Get The Diff Between Two Files In Python

This is what I ended up with for real

python3

#!/usr/bin/env python3

import difflib
import normalize_dates
import unittest
import filecmp
import sys
import io


class TestNormalizeDates(unittest.TestCase):

    def test_first_file(self):

        input_dir = "data_for_tests/input"
        output_dir = "data_for_tests/output"
        target_dir = "data_for_tests/targets"

        normalize_dates.make_files(
            input_dir=input_dir,
            output_dir=output_dir
        )

        file_list = ['1', '2']

        for file in file_list:
            a_file = f"{output_dir}/{file}.txt"
            b_file = f"{target_dir}/{file}.txt"
            with open(a_file) as _a:
                a_list = _a.read().splitlines()
            with open(b_file) as _b:
                b_list = _b.read().splitlines()
            self.assertListEqual(
                a_list, b_list
            )


if __name__ == "__main__":
    unittest.main()

The below are for notes to put together later

NOTE : the filecmp.cmp has problems with newlines in some cases that I can't figure out (like it looks like there shouldn't be a difference but there is)

I think this is the way I'm going to do it for testing (time passes... nope, gonna use difflib below since it's easier to see what's up). TODO : Figure out if there's a way to use the diff itself for the compare instead of filecmp.

python3

#!/usr/bin/env python3 is here

import difflib
import normalize_dates
import unittest
import filecmp
import sys
import io


class TestNormalizeDates(unittest.TestCase):

    def test_first_file(self):

        input_dir = "data_for_tests/input",
        output_dir = "data_for_tests/output"

        normalize_dates.make_files(
            input_dir=input_dir,
            output_dir=output_dir
        )

        input_file = "data_for_tests/input/1.txt"
        output_file = "data_for_tests/output/1.txt"

        with open(input_file) as _in_file:
            input_lines = _in_file.readlines()
        with open(output_file) as _out_file:
            output_lines = _out_file.readlines()

        self.assertListEqual(
            input_lines,
            output_lines
        )

if __name__ == "__main__":
    unittest.main()

This is the way that I like to do it that's very compact.

import difflib
import sys

input_file = "/Users/alans/workshop/site_ksuid_migration/02_add_and_normalize_dates_in_frontmatter/data_for_tests/input/1.txt"
output_file = "/Users/alans/workshop/site_ksuid_migration/02_add_and_normalize_dates_in_frontmatter/data_for_tests/output/1.txt"

with open(input_file) as _in:
    input_data = _in.readlines()
    
with open(output_file) as _out:
    output_data = _out.readlines()

sys.stdout.writelines(
    difflib.unified_diff(
        input_data,
        output_data, 
        n=0
    )
)

Here's the other examples :

sys.stdout.writelines(
    difflib.unified_diff(
        input_data,
        output_data, 
        'input_file.txt',
        'output_file.txt'
    )
)



-- hr

category: Miscellaneous
-date: '2007-08-29'
+date: '2007-08-29T00:00:00'
slug: /a-few-more-dave-ramsey-thoughts
title: A few more Dave Ramsey thoughts
template: post


print("\n")
print("\n")


# compact output
sys.stdout.writelines(
    difflib.unified_diff(
        input_data,
        output_data, 
        'input_file.txt',
        'output_file.txt',
        n=0
    )
)

Output

-date: '2007-08-29'
+date: '2007-08-29T00:00:00'


print("\n")
print("\n")



# compact output with no file names which looks a little cleaner to me
# there's no need to pass the file names and by reducing the context
# it's very clean
sys.stdout.writelines(
    difflib.unified_diff(
        input_data,
        output_data, 
        n=0
    )
)

TODO : Go thru here are write up more examples :

https : //docs.python.org/3/library/difflib.html#module - difflib

See also this which looks interesting, but not that the [TODO: Code shorthand span ] isn't closed (see comment on that)

41          self.assertListEqual(
  1             list(io.open(input_file)),
  2             list(io.open(output_file))
  3         )