Meador Inge wrote: >>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. That would be a good option, but at this point, all we care about is the numerical tolerance aspect -- ndiff should be primarily focused on numbers. We can use diff for text-based changes if need be. Thanks for the interest, -- Bil http://fun3d.larc.nasa.gov