Compare two files ignoring order

Question

I have two files which the order of lines is irrelevant, and I want to compare its content.

I looked into diff documentation but could not find anything like --ignore-order.

Any tips?

Answer 1

Sort the files first:

$ sort file1 > file1.sorted $ sort file2 | diff - file1.sorted 

Also, although I personally discourage this sort of thing, if you are using bash and this feature is enabled on your system you can avoid the temporary file by using a process substitution:

$ diff <(sort file1) <(sort file2)