'Count character difference between two files in bash

What would be the best way to count the number of characters that are different between strings in two files. I know how to do this in Python but I need a bash solution.

File contents:

ABCDEF

ABDCEF

Output:

2

Thank you

bashshellunixdifference


Solution 1:[1]

Use cmp to compare files with -l for verbose, then count the lines with wc:

cmp -bl file1 file2 | wc -l

http://linux.die.net/man/1/cmp

Solution 2:[2]

The following worked,

#!/bin/bash
read -p "Filename: " file1
    awk '(NR>1)' $file1 | tee file1.tmp
        for file in *.txt
            do awk '(NR>1)' $file > $file2.tmp
            cmp -bl file1.tmp $file2.tmp | wc -l
            rm $file2.tmp
        done

function finish {
    rm file1.tmp
}
trap finish EXIT

Sources

This article follows the attribution requirements of Stack Overflow and is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Source: Stack Overflow

Solution Source
Solution 1 Stephan van der Feest
Solution 2 Jalan

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