Mike has an nice idea:
> fcopy from=oldfile;to=newfile;char;norecnum;upshift
> fcopy from=oldfile;to=newfile;compare=1000
> COMPARE ERROR 1 FOUND AT RECORD 0, BYTE 0
> you should octcomp  and allocate FCOPY for better performance.

If you want to speed that up, you can usually do:

    :file oldfile; mr
    :file newfile; mr
    :fcopy from=oldfile;to=newfile;compare=1000

Drawbacks:

    only works if block factor is identical.

    reports block number where mismatch occurs, not record number.

Time advantage:

    I timed comparing a copy of CATALOG.PUB.SYS.  The original
    method took 4.3 elapsed second and the MR method took
    0.9 seconds.

Also, if you only want to know "is the entire file ok", use COMPARE=1
in either example.

SS