Compare files across 2 UNIX boxes

Shell Programming and Scripting
1

Is it possible to compare two files which reside on different UNIX boxes?
(I'm using HP POSIX/Korn) :confused:

Consider the scenario of a pre-production environment (box 1) and a production environment (box 2) I would like to check if some files on both boxes match or not.

It's quite straightforward on one box:

#----------------------------------------------------
# Function to compares files and display differences
#
# $1 = file1, $2 = file2
#
# cmp with option -s gives the following return codes:
# 0 - identical
# 1 - different
# 2 - inaccessable/other
#----------------------------------------------------
function fn030_compare_file {

cmp -s $1 $2

if [[ $? -gt 0 ]]
then
echo "*** Difference in files! -----> $1 <---> $2"
else
echo "*** OK, Files identical -----> $1 <---> $2"
fi

return
}

The only alternative I can think of is to copy the files to one box, then compare from there.

NOTE: I found an excellent shell script which recursively compares the contents of two directories on one box (to find this do a google search on "cmptree"...)

2

You do realize there's already a perfectly good program to compare files without you building your own, right? It's called 'diff'.

As for comparing files on different systems, you could mount a directory from one machine onto another with nfs.

3

Basicly you need to get the remote file back to your local system to be able "diff" the two. Mount via nfs, or try a "rcp" to get a copy...

Can't think of a way you can use "diff" on two files where one is local and the other is remote?