Compare

Compare-Object

3 Important Parameters:

-ReferenceObject The ReferenceObject is the baseline.

-DifferenceObject The DifferenceObject is what you are looking for differences in.

-Property This is the property of the object that you are comparing. Can be a comma-seperated list?

<= Indicates that the property is present only on the ReferenceObject (Left Side).

=> Indicates that the property is present only on the DifferenceObject (Right Side).

Compares two files and displays the differences using the File Compare command in CMD.

fc C:\path\to\file1.txt C:\path\to\file2.txt

Compares the contents of two files or sets of files byte-by-byte, using the Comp command.

comp C:\path\to\file1.txt C:\path\to\file2.txt

Compares two files and shows differences using PowerShell. This command reads each file's content and then compares the objects.

Compare-Object (Get-Content C:\path\to\file1.txt) (Get-Content C:\path\to\file2.txt)

Checks if two files are identical, returning True or False, using PowerShell.

(Get-Content C:\path\to\file1.txt) -eq (Get-Content C:\path\to\file2.txt)

An alias in PowerShell for Compare-Object, used to compare file contents similar to the Unix/Linux diff command.

Note: diff as an alias may not be available in all PowerShell environments by default.

diff (Get-Content C:\path\to\file1.txt) (Get-Content C:\path\to\file2.txt)

Example: Comparing two text Files

Compare-Object -ReferenceObject (get-content .\testing.txt) -DifferenceObject (get-content .\2testing.txt)

Example: Comparing the Process List of two computers:

Collect the baseline computer's process list:

Get-Process | Export-CliXML reference.xml

Move it to the other computer to compare:

Compare-Object -Reference (Import-Clixml reference.xml) -Difference (Get-Process) -Property Name