How to count differences between two files on linux?

Question

I need to work with large files and must find differences between two. And I don\'t need the different bits, but the number of differences.

To find the number of dif

Answer 1

Since every output line that differs starts with < or > character, I would suggest this:

diff file1 file2 | grep ^[\>\<] | wc -l

By using only \< or \> in the script line you can count differences only in one of the files.