Two file numeric comparison in awk

Question

I'm trying to compare the contents of two files, both of which are just a single column of numbers, i.e.

File1:

1.2
2.6
3.4
4.7
5.3

File2:

5.1
4.8
3.2
2.5
1.6

The output should just be the number of lines in file1 that are greater than the corresponding line in file2; so in this case it'd just be

3

Answer 1

awk single process can do that job:

awk 'NR==FNR{a[NR]=$0;next}a[FNR]>$0{i++}END{print i}' file1 file2

outputs:

3

EDIT

by reading JonathanLeffler and steveha's comments, I would add another solution, to avoid to save a monster file into memory. still single awk process:

 awk '{getline x < "file2"}$0>x{i++}END{print i}' file1

outputs:

3

Answer 2

Try using paste followed by awk

paste file1 file2 | awk '$1>$2 {i++} END {print i}'

Output:

3