Compare Contents of two files??

[Anon]

I'm a computer teacher and a php newbie, but I'm thinking about ways to simplify my life, and was wondering if the following was possible...

Part of my student's assignments involve opening up MS Word template files, and then modifying them per specific instructions. I was wondering if there was a way to place a correct file in a directory in my webserver, then have students upload their files for "grading"... a php script would then compare the "correct" file with their files and return a percentage of certainty that the files are the same... for example say that "oddysey1.doc" is 95% similar to "oddysey1_answer.doc". I could then have the results recorded in a mysql database for each student.

The thing I'm not sure how to do is have PHP actually compare the contents of two files and report how similar they are.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[Anon]

There are several different functions you could use to compaire the correct file and the students file. Here are a few that might help you:

http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.similar-text.php

http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.count-chars.php

Also i believe you said it was in a word document? If it is and some of the requirements for the assignment are formatting then this could be an issue.

Hope this is a starting point for you.

Derek C.