What is an easy way to do a sorted diff between two files?

Question

I have two files in which some of the lines have changed order. I would like to be able to compare these.

One website suggested something that looks like this:

diff <(sort text2) <(sort text1) 

But this yields the error: Missing name for redirect.

I am using tcsh. Is the command above for a different shell?

Is there a better way?

Answer 1

This redirection syntax is bash specific. Thus it won't work in tcsh.

You can call bash and specify the command directly:

bash -c 'diff <(sort text2) <(sort text1)' 

Answer 2

Here's a function for it:

function diffs() {         diff "${@:3}" <(sort "$1") <(sort "$2") } 

Call it like this:

diffs file1 file2 [other diff args, e.g. -y] 

Presumably you could alter it as per David Schmitt's answer if necessary.