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I realize that the diff command is reserved for directories/files, but I've seen it being able to read from standard input, so that's not necessarily true.

Is it possible to somehow compare two variables that were stored in a ksh script?

The code looks like this:

a=$(cut -c 1-10 first_file.txt)
b=$(cut -f '3' -d ' ' second_file.txt)

#what I would like to do
$(diff $a $b) > differences.txt
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Use process substution (thanks, Dennis!) as described here. This would probably do it

diff <(echo $a) <(echo $b)

At least, that worked for me in bash on cygwin.

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That's process substitution rather than input redirection. – Dennis Williamson Jan 6 '11 at 21:14
Well, with the <, it's both, right? – mfinni Jan 6 '11 at 21:16
Nope, I'm wrong, you're right. – mfinni Jan 6 '11 at 21:17
Sorry, ksh doesn't like it. – Nitrodist Jan 6 '11 at 21:32
So figure out the syntax for process substitution on ksh. – mfinni Jan 6 '11 at 21:34
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