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Python Library Reference |  |
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The filecmp module defines a function to compare files, taking all sort of short-cuts to make it a highly efficient operation.
The filecmp module defines the following function:
1if they seem equal, 0 otherwise.
Unless shallow is given and is false, files with identical os.stat() signatures are taken to be equal. If use_statcache is given and is true, statcache.stat() will be called rather then os.stat().
Files that were compared using this function will not be compared again unless their os.stat() signature changes. Note that using use_statcache true will cause the cache invalidation mechanism to fail -- the stale stat value will be used from statcache's cache.
Note that no external programs are called from this module giving it portability and efficiency.
Example:
>>> import filecmp
>>> filecmp.cmp('libundoc.tex', 'libundoc.tex')
1
>>> filecmp.cmp('libundoc.tex', 'lib.tex')
0