eCue

eCue

eCue is a simple shell script that uses CUE to test for semantic equality of structured data files.

It compares 2 files' contents, and exits with a status code of 0 if and only if the 2 files contain the same underlying data.

It works with any structured data format supported by the CUE CLI, which includes JSON and YaML.

The names of both files must have a standard suffix: .json, .yml, or .yaml.

Installation

Clone this repo, or download the eCue.sh script.

eCue has one dependency: the cue CLI tool.

Usage

$ /path/to/eCue.sh <file1> <file2>

Example

These 2 YaML files are semantically equal, but not byte-for-byte equal:

• 1.yml:

foo: 1
bar: 2

• 2.yml:

bar: 2
foo: 1

eCue uses CUE to check that 2 files contain the same information, even if the data is stated in a different order:

$ /path/to/eCue.sh 1.yml 2.yml
$ echo $?
0

If another file is introduced, containing different structured data, and is compared to either of the first 2 files, eCue provides a CUE error message showing one or more differences encountered.

$ cat 3.yml
notFoo: 1
bar: 2
$ /path/to/eCue.sh 1.yml 3.yml 
notFoo: field not allowed:
    ./3.yml:1:2
    ../../../../tmp/tmp.RWnZAU5cQN.cue:1:10
$ echo $?
1