How do I write an applescript to match strings in two textedit documents?

set listA to paragraphs of (read "/path/to/fileA")

set listB to paragraphs of (read "/path/to/fileB")

set editedList to {}

repeat with thisEmailAddress in listA

if thisEmailAddress is not in listB then

set end of editedList to thisEmailAddress

end if

end repeat

set {oldTID, my text item delimiters} to {my text item delimiters, return}

set editedText to editedList as text

set my text item delimiters to oldTID

set fp to open for access "/path/to/outputFile/" with write permission

writeeditedTexttofp

close accessfp

There are some things you could do to optimize it, but unless your list has thousands of entries this should do well enough.

Try this:

set fileA to POSIX file "/Path/to/File A" as alias

set fileB to POSIX file "/Path/to/File B" as alias

tell application "TextEdit"

set document1 to openfileA

set document2 to openfileB

end tell

set theLongList to paragraphs of document1

set theShortList to paragraphs of document2

set theNumbers to {}

repeat with k from 1 to (count items of theLongList)

set thisParagraph to itemk of theLongList

if (length of thisParagraph > 1) and (thisParagraph is in theShortList) then

copy k to the end of theNumbers

end if

end repeat

repeat with k in reverse of theNumbers

tell document1 to delete paragraph k

end repeat

Have you replaced "/Path/to/File A" and "/Path/to/File B" with real paths, like for example "/Users/pierre/Desktop/File A.rtf" and "/Users/pierre/Desktop/File A.rtf"?

Since the script works flawlessly on my computer, I can't understand why it doesn't work on yours.

Something else… You wrote “with one email address per line”. Am I right to assume that you were actually meaning “one email address per paragraph"?

Each time you press Return, you create a new paragraph. Some paragraphs have just one line, others have many lines. To create a new line without creating a new paragraph, you just have to press Control+Return. When you triple click on any line of a multi-line paragraph, you select the whole paragraph.

Last question: was I right to assume that each paragraph of both files A and B did not contain anything else than an email address, like this:

I understand that you now have a script working. Nevertheless, would you be kind enough to try the following version of my previous script. If this one works, I think I'll be able to tell you why the previous one didn't work on your computer.

set fileA to POSIX file "/Path/to/File A" as alias

set fileB to POSIX file "/Path/to/File B" as alias

tell application "TextEdit"

set document1 to openfileA

set document2 to openfileB

end tell

set theLongList to paragraphs of document1 as text

set theShortList to paragraphs of document2 as text

set theNumbers to {}

repeat with k from 1 to (count paragraphs of theLongList)

set thisParagraph to paragraphk of theLongList

if (length of thisParagraph > 1) and (thisParagraph is in theShortList) then

copy k to the end of theNumbers

end if

end repeat

repeat with k in reverse of theNumbers

tell document1 to deleteparagraphk

end repeat

Message was edited by: Pierre L.