Hi I'm a begginer to awk. I need to know how to compare 2 files with similar data, just that file 1 holds few records as when file 2 holds many records. File 1: Arnold Kim Mike Parris Kris Shay File 2: Arnold Kim Kevin Parker Mike Parris Ben Scott Kris Shay If the records match in these two files I wanna generate an output file (file 3, with the matched records) Arnold Kim Mike Parris Kris Shay and another file (file 4 with unmatched data). Kevin Parker Ben Scott Can you help me out. ss

Are you sure this isn't homework? Anyway, take a look at this link http://www.computing.net/unix/wwwbo... James Booth shows you how to read a file into an awk array.

Since you are a beginner, you should be reading up on awk, trying to do it yourself first before even posting in any forums. however, giving you the benefit of doubt, here's one way in awk. [code] awk 'FNR==NR{ arr[$0];next} {if ($0 in arr) print $0 > "matched.txt" else print $0 > "not_matched.txt" }' "file" "file1" [/code]

It sounds like homework to me. If you are really running OS2, you should be doing this in REXX, not Awk.