> So we need ability to compare numerical fields line-by-line,
> ignoring any text that might be surrounding them, but
> make sure that for a given line, the same number of
> "numeric fields" exist.
But shouldn't the surrounding text matter to some degree? Otherwise:
   a b 1.2345 c d
would match:
   d c 1.2345 b a
.. It seems to me much safer to at least assure that the surrounding
text is the same in both files.