Comparing two text files with non-adjacent lines for unique entries

I am trying to find an easy and fast way to compare two files, each
with several thousand lines - only one column and spit out what is
unique only to one of the files.
So, compare file A and file B, and only lines that re unique to file A
are spit out to a new file.. comm and diff / sort and Uniq do not
work because in this case the two files will have non-adjacent lines.

Any help is GREATLY appreciated. Thank you in advance!
-TT

<tntelle@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:1187142111.587829.251580@q3g2000prf.googlegro ups.com...
> I am trying to find an easy and fast way to compare two files, each
> with several thousand lines - only one column and spit out what is
> unique only to one of the files.
> So, compare file A and file B, and only lines that re unique to file A
> are spit out to a new file.. comm and diff / sort and Uniq do not
> work because in this case the two files will have non-adjacent lines.
>

cat A A B | sort |uniq -u
awk 'FNR==NR{Seen[$0]++} FNR!=NR && !Seen[$0]' A B

I am not sure what you mean by "non-adjacent lines".
And note that the two solutions above give different results for
lines that appear more than once in B: it is not clear what you want.
Surely solutions based on diff or comm will work if you first sort
A and B?

--
John.

On Aug 15, 2:37 am, William James <w_a_x_...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> John L wrote:
> > <tnte...@yahoo.com> wrote in messagenews:1187142111.587829.251580@q3g2000prf.go oglegroups.com...
> > > I am trying to find an easy and fast way to compare two files, each
> > > with several thousand lines - only one column and spit out what is
> > > unique only to one of the files.
> > > So, compare file A and file B, and only lines that re unique to file A
> > > are spit out to a new file.. comm and diff / sort and Uniq do not
> > > work because in this case the two files will have non-adjacent lines.
>
> > cat A A B | sort |uniq -u
> > awk 'FNR==NR{Seen[$0]++} FNR!=NR && !Seen[$0]' A B
>
> > I am not sure what you mean by "non-adjacent lines".
> > And note that the two solutions above give different results for
> > lines that appear more than once in B: it is not clear what you want.
> > Surely solutions based on diff or comm will work if you first sort
> > A and B?
>
> > --
> > John.
>
> Since he wants the lines that are in A but not in B,
> I think the order of the files should be reversed.
>
> awk 'NR==FNR{seen[$0]++; next} !seen[$0]' B A
>
> Another way:
>
> awk 'NR==FNR{seen[$0]; next} !($0 in seen)' B A
>
> One Ruby solution:
>
> ruby -e 'def lines;gets(nil).split("\n") end; puts lines - lines' A B- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

Thank you all ---
When i attempt awk 'NR==FNR{seen[$0]++; next} !seen[$0]' B A - i get
awk: syntax error near line 1
awk: bailing out near line 1

=/