Comparing two files in python

Question

I have the following code. I have checked other links on stackoverflow, but they are slightly complicated than mine.

For now my text files have hello(in file1) and hell(in file2) as data.

I believe my logic is correct but I get the following error

TypeError: object of type '_io.TextIOWrapper' has no len()

Where am I going wrong?

def compareString(line1,line2): #sub function to compare strings of files
    i=0 #initial index
    while line1[i]==line2[i]: #compare each line until they are equal
        i=i+1
    if line1[i]!=line2[i]: #if unequal
        print('Mismatch at character ',i,line1[i]) #print error message

def compareMain(): #
    file1=input('Enter the name of the first file: ') #input file1 name
    file2=input('Enter the name of the second file: ') #input file2 name

    fp1=open(file1,'r') #open file1, reading mode
    fp2=open(file2,'r') #open file2, reading mode
    for line1 in range(len(fp1)): #Getting each line of file1
        for line2 in range(len(fp2)): #Getting each line of file2
            compareString(line1,line2) #Call compare function
    fp1.close() #Close file1
    fp2.close() #Close file2

compareMain() #Execute

Answer 1

I would do it like this:

def compare_files():
    file1=input('Enter the name of the first file: ') #input file1 name
    file2=input('Enter the name of the second file: ') #input file2 name
    fp1=open(file1,'r') #open file1, reading mode
    fp2=open(file2,'r') #open file2, reading mode
    if (fp1.read() == fp2.read()):
        print("Files are the same")
    else:
        print("Files are not the same")

compare_files()

Method .read() will return content of the file. We get content of both files and then we compare contents of this files.